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COPyRIGHT DEPOSrr 



OF ENGLISH TEXTS 
GENERAL EDITOR 

HENRY VAN DYKE 



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GATEiVAY SERIES 



SELECTIONS FROM 

BYRON, WORDSWORTH, SHELLEY, 
KEATS, AND BROWNING 

EDITED BY 

CHARLES TOWNSEND COPELAND 

LECTURER ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 

AND 

HENRY MILNER RIDEOUT 




NEW YORK •:• CINCINNATI •:• CHICAGO 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 






Copyright, 1909, by 
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY. 

Entered at Stationers' Hall, London. 

selections. 
W. P. I 



c. A 2455 59 
AUi 18 1909 



PREFACE BY THE GENERAL 
EDITOR 

This series of books aims, first, to give the English 
texts required for entrance to college in a form which 
shall make them clear, interesting, and helpful to those 
who are beginning the study of literature; and, second, 
to supply the knowledge which the student needs to 
pass the entrance examination. For these two reasons 
it is called The Gateway Series. 

The poems, plays, essays, and stories in these small 
volumes are treated, first of all, as works of literature, 
which were written to be read and enjoyed, not to be 
parsed and scanned and pulled to pieces. A short life 
of the author is given, and a portrait, in order to help 
the student to . know the real person who wrote the 
book. The introduction tells what it is about,, and 
how it was written, and where the author got the idea, 
and what it means. The notes at the foot of the page 
are simply to give the sense of the hard words so that 
the student can read straight on without turning to a 
dictionary. The other notes, at the end of the book, 
explain difficulties and allusions and fine points. 

5 



6 Preface by the General Editor 

The editors are chosen because of their thorough 
training and special fitness to deal with the books 
committed to them, and because they agree with this 
idea of what a Gateway Series ought to be. They 
express, in each case, their own views of the books 
which they edit. Simplicity, thoroughness, shortness, 
and clearness, — these, we hope, will be the marks of 
the series. 

HENRY VAN DYKE. 



CONTENTS 

Lord Byron page 

Introduction 9 

Selected Poems 23 

William Wordsworth 

Introduction 69 

Selected Poems 85 

Percy Bysshe Shelley 

Introduction 159 

Selected Poems 175 

John Keats 

Introduction 209 

Selected Poems 225 

Robert Browning 

Introduction 245 

Selected Poems 261 

Notes * . . . 309 



LORD BYRON 
♦ I. Life 

George Gordon, afterward sixth Lord Byron, was 
born in Holies Street, London, January 22, 1788. His 
mother, Catherine Gordon, had become the second wife 
of John Byron, a handsome profligate who deserted 
her and her child, fled from his creditors, and died at 
Valenciennes in 1791. Till her son was ten years old, 
Mrs. Byron lived in Scotland, chiefly at Aberdeen, on 
a meagre income of ^150 a year. But in 1798 the 
fifth Lord Byron died, — the boy's great-uncle, that 
" wicked lord " who was brother to the Admiral, " Foul- 
weather Jack." At school roll-call, after the news ar- 
rived, the name of George Gordon was read out with 
" Dominus " before it, and the precocious little lame 
boy burst into tears, in some mingled and violent emo- 
tion. 

With his mother and the Scotch nurse who had taught 
him to read the Bible, the young Lord Byron soon jour- 
neyed south in a post-chaise, to live near Newstead 
Abbey, the family seat, then partly ruined, which Henry 
VHI granted to " little Sir John Byron of the great 
beard." Here they remained for a year. Their life 
together was never happy. " Byron," a schoolmate 
once said, '' your mother is a fool ! " And the poor 

9 



lo Lord Byron 

child replied, tragically, " I know it ! " By fits and 
starts Mrs. Byron was kind to him, but she had a stormy 
temper, hysterical and ungovernable, and by turns 
petted and beat him. Once at least she rushed at 
him with the poker, and Byron defended himself with 
the chairs. Later, at Southwell, mother and son each 
secretly warned an apothecary not to sell poison to 
the other, if it should be asked for. A violent pair, 
they lived in a tempest. Perhaps what hurt Byron 
most, his mother once called him a "lame brat." 
Quietly, but with a terrible light in his eyes, he replied, 
" I was born so, mother ! " 

He was born, indeed, with a deformity — a sort of 
club-foot — which throughout his life he hardly forgot 
for a moment. The defect appears not to have been 
greatly noticeable, but he brooded over it always : 
from the time when, on his nurse's knees, he cut with 
his baby's whip at a visitor who noticed his foot, crying, 
" Dinna speak of it ! " — from his school days at Harrow, 
where cruel bullies put his lame foot into a bucket of 
water; from the days when he jealously watched his 
cousin, Mary Chaworth, dancing with other youths, to 
his last hours on his death-bed. His lameness cut him 
off from many games and exercises, but not all. At 
Harrow — where he stayed from 1801 to 1805, and 
where his head-master discovered talents which would 
"add lustre to his rank " — he not only led all the boys' 
rebellions, but fought the larger boys who tormented 
the smaller, and — lameness and all — won six battles 
out of seven. 



Introduction ll 

Though later of a strikingly beautiful face and figure, 
he was at this time described by an acquaintance as '' a 
fat, bashful boy, with hair combed straight over his 
forehead, and looking a perfect gaby." He was con- 
ceited as well as shy, and not very popular among girls. 
We need not be surprised, therefore, that when, in his 
sixteenth year, he fell in love with his cousin, Mary 
Chaworth, she did not fall in love with him. She after- 
ward married a commonplace squire named Musters, 
and married unhappily. For years Byron brooded over 
this disappointment, but most over an unintentionally 
cruel rebuke, when he heard Mary Chaworth say to her 
maid: " Do you think I could marry that lame boy? " 

When Byron went up to Cambridge in 1805, you must 
picture him as a brilliant, vain, sensitive youngster, 
whom the g^'p (the man that took care of his rooms) 
feared as " a young man of tumultuous passions " ; who 
made several sincere friends. Long, Harness, Matthews, 
Scrope Davies, and Hobhouse ; who found Cambridge 
dull, and became a harum-scarum undergraduate, some- 
times sitting up over champagne and claret till after mid- 
night ; who was a good cricketer, rider, boxer, could dive 
in the Cam and get coins fourteen feet deep, and was an 
expert shot. His pistols he carried everywhere and 
fired at all times and places, — alarming people, as he 
also alarmed them by keeping a tame bear, who, he 
said, was to " sit for a fellowship." Meantime he pub- 
lished in 1806 a volume of juvenile poems, and in 1807 
his Hours of Idleness. In 1808, after three irregular 
years in which he had done everything but study, he 



12 Lord Byron 

took the honorary (nobleman's) degree of M.A., and 
left Cambridge for London. 

Here he was wilder than ever, and boasted of being 
so ; for he always took a foolish delight in thinking 
himself very wicked, and in telling everybody about it, 
with exaggerations. He had an almost insane desire 
to shock people. Sensitive, moody, he was forever 
disclosing and falsifying his most intimate nature. 
His gifts he had not yet disclosed ; till a savage, " tom- 
ahawk " criticism of the Hours of Idleness^ in the Edin- 
bu7-gh Revieiv for January, 1808, roused him into a rage. 
Mere rage, but also a stinging wit, made his English 
Bards and Scotch Reviewers something more than a 
reply to his critics. It was the most notable satirical 
poem since the age of Pope. It scoffed at men he 
knew, and men he did not know ; at books he had 
read, and books he had never seen the covers of. 
Wholesale ridicule by a youngster of twenty-one, often 
shallow and unjust, it showed power. A few days be- 
fore the poem appeared, Byron had taken his seat in 
the House of Lords, haughtily, or at least negligently. 
He now retired with a few friends to Newstead, for a 
long and strange carousal, with the popping of corks 
and pistols, with a wolf and a bear to tease, and with 
fencing and swimming, and late hours of wild discus- 
sion and ghost stories, while they drank wine from the 
skull of an old monk. These orgies were doubtless 
bad enough, but not at all so dark as the readers of 
Childe Ha7'old afterward imagined. 

The travels which led to that famous poem now 



Introduction 13 

began. From Newstead, Byron went with Hobhouse 
and a few servants to Falmouth, and sailed thence for 
Lisbon. He journeyed for two years through Greece, 
Turkey, the Troad, and the Greek isles. He dined 
with Ali Pasha, the Albanian bandit, assassin, and 
despot ; he met the Maid of Athens ; and with Lieuten- 
ant Ekenhead, he swam Leander's Hellespont, from 
Sestos to Abydos. After many adventurous wander- 
ings, he returned to England in 1811, "without a 
hope," he said, " and almost without a desire, . . . 
sick of poesy," but with " some 4000 lines, of one kind 
and another," written on his travels. 

Within a month his mother died. For all their 
constant battles and patched-up truces, Byron was 
deeply affected. Sorrow and renown came to him in 
the same year. Matthews, drowned in the Cam, was 
the fourth friend he had lost. On the ist of March, 
181 2, when the first and second cantos of Childe 
Harold appeared, Byron " woke and found himself 
famous." In four weeks the book ran through seven 
editions. The success was electric. The first edition 
of Burns, and Scott's Lays, were the only popular tri- 
umphs of poetry to be compared with this. Sir Walter 
himself soon gave up writing poetry, he said, " because 
Byron beat me." Byron, indeed, rapidly followed up his 
first success with others : in 18 13, The Waltz, The Giaour, 
and The Bride of Abydos, which last he dashed off in 
four nights ; next year. The Corsair, written in ten days, 
sold to the extent of 14,000 copies in one day; in the 
same year appeared Lara; and in 181 6, The Siege of 



14 Lord Byron 

Corinth and Parisina. In ten years, ^75,000 had 
passed over the publisher Murray's counter, from Lord 
Byron's pen alone. Byron and Byronic romance be- 
came the fashion, not only in England, but all over the 
continent. 

The two most popular English poets of the day, Scott 
and Byron (for you must remember that Wordsworth, 
Shelley, and Keats were long neglected and obscure), 
met in London in 18 15. They became friends, and 
afterwards exchanged gifts, " like the old heroes oi 
Homer." Scott found the new-risen genius irritable, 
suspicious, but also gay and generous. Lord Byron 
— he afterward said regretfully — could not be happy 
in the common way. "As for poets," he also said, 
" I have seen all the best of my time and country, and 
... I never thought any of them would come up to an 
artist's notion of the character, except Byron. His 
countenance is a thing to dream of." A child once 
described him as " the gentleman with the beautiful 
voice." Lady Blessington wrote that " his mouth was 
splendid, and his scornful expression was real, not 
affected, but a sweet smile often broke through his 
melancholy." And Lady Caroline Lamb, at first sight 
of Byron, exclaimed, " That pale face is my fate 1" 
We need not wonder that Byron fascinated many women, 
of high and low degree ; and that from 18 13 to 18 16, 
he was the social lion of the Regency. 

His marriage with Miss Anne Isabella Milbanke, in 
1 815, was very unhappy. Five weeks after the birth 
of their daughter, Augusta Ada, Lady Byron left her 



Introduction 15 

husband. Their troubles were discussed pubHcly, 
Byron's real and grave faults were magnified by slan- 
der, and a reaction setting in against him, this hero of 
the hour was attacked so atrociously as a monster, a 
Nero, a Satan, that in 18 16 he left England, never to 
come back. 

In Switzerland he wrote the third canto of Childe 
Harold^ the Prisoner of Chillon^ and Prometheus. 
He then journeyed to Italy, where he lived for the 
next seven years. In 18 17, at Venice, he finished 
Manfred^ and wrote the Lament of Tasso, the fourth 
canto of Childe Harold^ and Beppo ; in the next two 
years, the Ode oji Venice^ Mazeppa^ and the first four 
C2iX\X.os oi Don fnafi ; in 1820 and 1821, at Ravenna, 
the Prophecy of Dante, Marino Faliero, Sardanapalus, 
The Two Foscari, Cain, Heaven and Earth, and ^ Vi- 
sion of fudgment. During the rest of his stay, he wrote 
Werner, The Defonned T'ansformed, and The Island, and 
finished Don fiian. Meantime he had fallen in with 
Shelley. The two revolutionary poets lived at Pisa in 
the closest friendship ; and when in 1822 Shelley was 
drowned, Byron grieved beside that strange funeral 
pyre on the beach. His own life, throughout this 
period, was irregular and reckless. Fasting and revel- 
ling by turns, he ruined himself by his many excesses. 

But out of this sensual existence he rose, to redeem 
it by a splendid end. From a fantastic, posing volup- 
tuary, he suddenly became a man of action, a practical 
financier, soldier, and liberator. He had always hated 
despotism ; his name was already linked with that of 



i6 Lord Byron 

Greece ; and when the Greek war of independence, 
after two successful years, seemed ready to fail through 
dissension and poverty, it was natural that English 
friends of the Hellenic cause, planning an expedition of 
aid, should offer Byron the command. On July 15-16, 
1823, taking along Shelley's friend, Captain Trelawny, 
and a few others, Byron set sail from Genoa in the brig 
" Hercules," with arms and ammunition, horses, medi- 
cines, and 50,000 crowns in money. Fondness for 
display — as his enemies urged — may have impelled 
Byron at first ; but every day disclosed and strength- 
ened his high purpose. From the marshes of Misso- 
longhi, among fevers and turmoils, the poet-soldier 
disciplined his quarrelling Suliotes, repaired fortifica- 
tions, directed ships, negotiated for loans, and issued 
clear and statesmanlike orders. ^' Your counsels," said 
the Greek prince, " will be listened to like oracles." 
Fortune, however, would not suffer Byron to find a sol- 
dier's grave, to " look around, and choose his ground, 
and take his rest " ; for a fever seized him in that bog, 
and on April 19, 1824, he died, calling on the names 
of Augusta Leigh, his sister, and of Ada, his dead 
child. 

" Byron is dead ! " sounded in the streets, said Tre- 
lawny, like a bell tolling. Mavrocordatos commanded 
the battery to fire thirty-seven guns, one for each year 
of the short life. Lord Byron's body lies with his an- 
cestors in the village church of Hucknall, for Westmin- 
ster Abbey refused a grave to the author of Cam. But 
his spirit had " led the genius of Britain on a pilgrimage 



Introduction 17 

throughout all Europe" ; as for the birthplace of Homer, 
cities of Greece had contended for his burial-place ; 
and Athens would have laid her defender in the Temple 
of Theseus. 

II. Poems 

The Prisoner of ChiUo7i was written at Ouchy within 
two days, June 26 and 27, 1816, the first year 6f Byron's 
exile and one of the few most important years of his 
life. Byron, always alive to the horrors of oppression, 
had been deeply stirred by the meagre account of the 
sufferings of Bonnivard, a political prisoner in the Castle 
of Chillon, and by the sight of the room in which he 
was confined. " The Chateau de Chillon is situated 
between Clarens and Villeneuve, which last is at one 
extremity of the Lake of Geneva. On its left are the 
entrances of the Rhone, and opposite are the heights of 
Meillerie, and the range of Alps above Boveret and St. 
Gingo. Near it, on a hill behind, is a torrent : below 
it, washing its walls, the lake has been fathomed to 
the depth of 800 feet, French measure : within it are 
a range of dungeons, in which the early reformers, and 
subsequently prisoners of state, were confined. Across 
one of the vaults is a beam black with age, on which 
we were informed that the condemned were formerly 
executed. In the cells are seven pillars, or, rather, 
eight, one being half merged in the wall ; in some 
of these are rings for the fetters and the fettered: in 
the pavement the steps of Bonnivard have left their 
traces. He was confined here several years. . . . 



SELECTIONS 



1 8 Lord Bvron 

The Chateau is large, and seen along the lake for a 
great distance. The walls are white." 

You cannot better study the processes of a poet's mind 
in a work of this kind than by comparing these matter- 
of-fact details with the poem. In any good encyclopa:;dia 
or annotated edition of Byron you will find material, 
which you may well use, for further comparison ; and 
your teachers will no doubt put you in the way of seeing 
some of the many photographs of Chillon and the 
Lake of Geneva. 

The poem is written in a quieter, more chastened 
spirit than was common with Byron, and it is of su- 
perior form to his earlier short narratives. In fact, 
not only do The Prisojier and Alazeppa proceed almost 
wholly without digression, but their sheer speed of 
narrative is what Byron never attained in his longer 
pieces and rarely even in his shorter ones. This means 
also, of course, that scenery, on which Byron and other 
romantic poets are prone to insist too much, is here 
fleeting, incidental, strictly subordinate to the story and 
the impression it gives of Bonnivard. Yet the work 
would scarcely be Byron's if, concerned with outdoors 
at all, it did not contain some memorable picture. 
And indeed the one landscape in The Priso7ier not 
only gains by isolation and contrast, but it is one of 
those triumphs of art in which much is shown in strokes 
as few as they are secure. Bonnivard, having ascended 
to his barred windows to catch sight of the mountains 
again, says, in lines that have been often quoted and 
that will be quoted many times in the future — 



Introduction 19 

•* I saw them — and they were the same, 
They were not changed like me in frame; 
I saw their thousand years of snow 
On high — their wide long lake below. 
And the blue Rhone in fullest flow; 
I heard the torrents leap and gush 
O'er channelled rock and broken bush; 
I saw the white- walled distant town. 
And whiter sails go skimming down; 
And then there was a little isle. 
Which in my very face did smile. 
The only one in view; 
A small green isle, it seemed no more. 
Scarce broader than my dungeon noor, 
But in it there were three tall trees, 
And o'er it blew the mountain breeze. 
And by it there were waters flowing. 
And on it there were young flowers growing. 
Of gentle breath and hue." 

As definite, you see. as Elim, with its palm trees and 
its wells of water, in the Book of Exodus. And these 
lines, so far from breaking the unity of the poem, sene 
to strengthen it and to deepen the pathos of the whole. 
The passion and pathos of The Prisoner of Chi lion are 
cumulative in their effect, and grow through the account 
of the prisoner himself, and of the deaths of his broth- 
ers beside him ; of the madness of the prisoner, followed 
by despair ; of the bird's song, coming suddenly on 
his solitude and desolation ; of his final state, when 
long imprisonment has made him unfit for freedom. 
The fine sonnet, beginning 

•^ Eternal spirit of the chain less Mind,'' 



20 Lord Byron 

which would be impressive by itself, both gains 
and gives by being used as introduction to the 
narrative. 

Mazeppa has for introduction the lines in which 
Byron, following the facts briefly stated by Voltaire in his 
history of Charles XII of Sweden, relates the hard- 
ships and adventures of Charles after the disastrous 
battle of Pultowa, on July 8, 1709. The poet repre- 
sents Mazeppa, then Prince of Ukrania and an old 
man, as endeavouring to cheer the king with the ac- 
count of his wild and terrible ride when he was a young 
man. Here, also, Byron took his hint — no more — from 
Voltaire. Mazeppa, published in 18 19, was a reversion 
to the manner that. Byron got from Scott, and now 
used with surer effect than at first. After the ride 
once begins, Mazeppa is rapid and fiery to the end, 
and the episode of the wolves is as preternaturally 
vivid as anything in Tam o' Shanter. Indeed, not- 
withstanding the length of the work, you will at once 
see a kinship between Mazeppa's ride and the rides 
of Tam o' Shanter, Paul Revere, and Browning's un- 
named hero who rode from Ghent to Aix. The swift, 
uninterrupted movement is for most readers the main 
interest, and for many readers the only interest, in 
verses of this sort. Yet Byron's narrative, like Brown- 
ing's, is helped to reality by the rapid succession of 
objects that take the rider's eye. The steed, the wolves, 
the stream, the wood, the coming sun, the " thousand 
horse and none to ride," are all a part of your experi- 
ence while you read, as they were of Mazeppa's while 



Introduction 2i 

he rode. Movement and vision hurry on together in 
the strong, rushing verse. 

The Byron of these two episodic poems is, of course, 
not the Byron whose genius set all Europe on fire. 
But The Prisoner and Mazeppa, like everything else 
from his pen, were eagerly read, and did not lack 
comfort for despairing lovers of freedom on a continent 
where, not without help from free England, the old 
despotisms were everywhere being re-established. 

III. Bibliographical Note 

Texts. — Works: Poetry, ed. E. H. Coleridge (7 vols. 
London, 1898-1904) ; Letters ajid Joiiriials, ed. R. E. Proth- 
ero (6 vols. London, 1 898-1 901). Selections, with essay by 
Matthew Arnold, in Golden Treasury Series ; Selections, ed. 
F. I. Carpenter; Letters, in Camelot Series. 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by J. Nichol (English 
Men of Letters) ; Life, by R. Noel (Great Writers) ; Essays, 
by T. B. Macaulay ; by W. Hazlitt {T/ie Spirit of the Age), 



SELECTIONS FROM LORD BYRON 

PAGE 

The Prisoner of Chillon 23 

Mazeppa 38 



22 



SELECTIONS FROM LORD BYRON 

I 

The Prisoner of Chillon 
sonnet on chillon 

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind ! 

Brightest in dungeons, Liberty ! thou art : 

For there thy habitation is the heart — 
The heart which love of thee alone can bind ; 
And when thy sons to fetters are consigned — 5 

To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, 

Their country conquers with their martyrdom, 
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. 
Chillon ! thy prison is a holy place, 

And thy sad floor an altar — for 'twas trod, 10 

Until his very steps have left a trace 

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod, 
By Bonnivard ! — May none those marks efface ! 

For they appeal from tyranny to God. 



My hair is grey, but not with years, 15 

Nor grew it white 

In a single night, 
As men's have grown from sudden fears: 
23 



24 Lord Byron 

My limbs are bowed, though not with toil, 

But rusted with a vile repose, 20 

For they have been a dungeon's spoil, 

And mine has been the fate of those 
To whom the goodly earth and air 
Are banned, and barred — forbidden fare ; 
But this was for my father's faith 25 

I suffered chains and courted death ; 
That father perished at the stake 
For tenets he would not forsake ; 
And for the same his lineal race 
In darkness found a dwelling place ; 30 

We were seven — who now are one, 

Six in youth, and one in age, 
Finished as they had begun, 

Proud of Persecution's rage ; 
One in fire, and two in field, 35 

Their belief with blood have sealed, 
Dying as their father died. 
For the God their foes denied ; — 
Three were in a dungeon cast, 
Of whom this wreck is left the last. 40 



There are seven pillars of Gothic mould, 

In Chillon's dungeons deep and old. 

There are seven columns, massy and grey, 

Dim with a dull imprisoned ray, 

A sunbeam which hath lost its way, 45 



Selected Poems 25 

And through the crevice and the cleft 

Of the thick wall is fallen and left ; 

Creeping o'er the floor so damp, 

Like a marsh's meteor lamp : 

And in each pillar there is a ring, 50 

And in each ring there is a chain ; 
That iron is a cankering thing, 

For in these limbs its teeth remain, 
With marks that will not wear away. 
Till I have done with this new day, 55 

Which now is painful to these eyes, 
Which have not seen the sun so rise 
For years — I cannot count them o'er, 
I lost their long and heavy score 
When my last brother dropped and died, 60 

And I lay living by his side. 

Ill 

They chained us each to a column stone, 

And we were three — yet, each alone ; 

We could not move a single pace. 

We could not see each other's face, 65 

But with that pale and livid light 

That made us strangers in our sight : 

And thus together — yet apart, 

Fettered in hand, but joined in heart, 

'Twas still some solace in the dearth 70 

Of the pure elements of earth, 

To hearken to each other's speech. 

And each turn comforter to each 



26 Lord Byron 

With some new hope, or legend old, 

Or song heroically bold ; 75 

But even these at length grew cold. 

Our voices took a dreary tone. 

An echo of the dungeon stone, 

A grating sound, not full and free, 

As they of yore were wont to be : 80 

It might be fancy — but to me 

They never sounded like our own. 

IV 

I was the eldest of the three, 

And to uphold and cheer the rest 

I ought to do — and did my best — 85 

And each did well in his degree. 

The youngest, whom my father loved, 
Because our mother's brow was given 
To him, with eyes as blue as heaven — 

For him my soul was sorely moved : 90 

And truly might it be distressed 
To see such bird in such a nest ; 
For he was beautiful as day — 

(When day was beautiful to me 

As to young eagles, being free) — 95 

A polar day, which will not see 
A sunset till its summer's gone. 

Its sleepless summer of long light. 
The snow-clad offspring of the sun : 

And thus he was as pure and bright, 100 

And in his natural spirit gay. 



Selected Poems 27 

With tears for naught but others' ills, 

And then they flowed like mountain rills, 

Unless he could assuage the woe 

Which he abhorred to view below. 10; 



The other was as pure of mind, 

But formed to combat with his kind ; 

Strong in his frame, and of a mood 

Which 'gainst the world in war had stood, 

And perished in the foremost rank no 

With joy : — but not in chains to pine : 
His spirit withered with their clank, 

I saw it silently decline — 

And so perchance in sooth did mine : 
But yet I forced it on to cheer 115 

Those relics of a home so dear. 
He was a hunter of the hills. 

Had followed there the deer and wolf; 

To him this dungeon was a gulf, 
And fettered feet the worst of ills. 120 

VI 

Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls : 
A thousand feet in depth below 
Its massy waters meet and flow ; 
Thus much the fathom-line was sent 
From Chillon's snow-white battlement, 125 

Which round about the wave inthralls : 



28 Lord Byron 

A double dungeon wall and wave 

Have made — and like a living grave. 

Below the surface of the lake 

The dark vault lies wherein we lay : 130 

We heard it ripple night and day ; 

Sounding o'er our heads it knocked ; 
And I have felt the winter's spray 
Wash through the bars w^hen winds were high 
And wanton in the happy sky ; 135 

And then the very rock hath rocked, 
And I have felt it shake, unshocked, 
Because I could have smiled to see 
The death that would have set me free. 



VII 

I said my nearer brother pined, 140 

I said his mighty heart declined, 

He loathed and put away his food ; 

It was not that 'twas coarse and rude, 

For we were used to hunter's fare. 

And for the like had little care : 145 

The milk drawn from the mountain goat 

Was changed for water from the moat, 

Our bread was such as captives' tears 

Have moistened many a thousand years, 

Since man first pent his fellow men 150 

Like brutes within an iron den ; 

But what were these to us or him ? 

These wasted not his heart or Hmb ; 



Selected Poems 



29 



My brother's soul was of that mould 

Which in a palace had grown cold, 155 

Had his free breathing been denied 

The range of the steep mountain's side ; 

But why delay the truth? — he died. 

I saw, and could not hold his head, 

Nor reach his dying hand — nor dead, — 160 

Though hard I strove, but strove in vain, 

To rend and gnash my bonds in twain. 

He died — and they unlocked his chain, 

And scooped for him a shallow grave 

Even from the cold earth of our cave. 165 

I begged them, as a boon, to lay 

His corse in dust whereon the day 

Might shine — it was a foolish thought. 

But then within my brain it wrought. 

That even in death his freeborn breast 170 

In such a dungeon could not rest. 

I might have spared my idle prayer — 

They coldly laughed — and laid him there ; 

The flat and turfless earth above 

The being we so much did love; 175 

His empty chain above it leant, 

Such Murder's fitting monument ! 

VIII 

But he, the favourite and the flower, 

Most cherished since his natal hour. 

His mother's image in fair face, 180 

The infant love of all his race, 



JO Lord Byron 

His martyred father's dearest thought, 

My latest care, for whom I sought 

To hoard my life, that his might be 

Less wretched now, and one day free ; 185 

He, too, who yet had held untired 

A spirit natural or inspired — 

He, too, was struck, and day by day 

Was withered on the stalk away. 

Oh, God ! it is a fearful thing 190 

To see the human soul take wing 

In any shape, in any mood : 

I've seen it rushing forth in blood, 

I've seen it on the breaking ocean 

Strive with a swoln convulsive motion, 195 

I've seen the sick and ghastly bed 

Of Sin delirious with its dread : 

But these were horrors — this was woe 

Unmixed with such — but sure and slow : 

He faded, and so calm and meek, • 200 

So softly worn, so sweetly weak, 

So tearless, yet so tender — kind, 

And grieved for those he left behind ; 

With all the while a cheek whose bloom 

Was as a mockery of the tomb, 205 

Whose tints as gently sunk away 

As a departing rainbow's ray ; 

An eye of most transparent light, 

That almost made the dungeon bright ; 

And not a word of murmur — not 210 

A groan o'er his untimely lot, — 



Selected Poems 31 

A little talk of better days, 
A little hope my own to raise, 
For I was sunk in silence — lost 
In this last loss, of all the most ; 215 

And then the sighs he would suppress 
Of fainting Nature's feebleness, 
More slowly drawn, grew less and less : 
I listened, but I could not hear ; 
I called, for I was wild with fear ; 220 

I knew 'twas hopeless, but my dread 
Would not be thus admonished ; 
I called, and thought I heard a sound — 
I burst my chain with one strong bound. 
And rushed to him : — I found him not, 225 

/only stirred in this black spot, 
/only lived, /only drew 
The accursed breath of dungeon-dew ; 
The last, the sole, the dearest link 
Between me and the eternal brink, 230 

Which bound me to my failing race, 
Was broken in this fatal place. 
One on the earth, and one beneath — 
My brothers — both had ceased to breathe ! 
I took that hand which lay so still, 235 

Alas ! my own was full as chill ; 
I had not strength to stir, or strive, 
But felt that I was still alive — 
A frantic feeling, when we know 
That what we love shall ne'er be so. 240 

I know not why 



32 Lord Byron 

I could not die, 
I had no earthly hope — but faith, 
And that forbade a selfish death. 

IX 

What next befell me then and there 245 

I know not well — I never knew — 

First came the loss of light, and air, 
And then of darkness too : 

I had no thought, no feeling — none — 

Among the stones I stood a stone, 250 

And was, scarce conscious what I wist. 

As shrubless crags within the mist ; 

For all was blank, and bleak, and grey ; 

It was not night — it was not day ; 

It was not even the dungeon-light, 255 

So hateful to my heavy sight. 

But vacancy absorbing space. 

And fixedness — without a place ; 

There were no stars — no earth — no time — 259 

No check — no change — no good — no crime — 

But silence, and a stirless breath 

Which neither was of life nor death ; 

A sea of stagnant idleness. 

Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless ! 



A light broke in upon my brain, — 265 

It was the carol of a bird ; 
It ceased, and then it came again, 



Selected Poems 



33 



The sweetest song ear ever heard, 
And mine was thankful till my eyes 
Ran over with the glad surprise, 270 

And they that moment could not see 
I was the mate of misery ; 
But then by dull degrees came back 
My senses to their wonted track ; 
I saw the dungeon walls and floor 275 

Close slowly round me as before, 
I saw the glimmer of the sun 
Creeping as it before had done, 
But through the crevice where it came 
That bird was perched, as fond and tame, 280 

And tamer than upon the tree ; 
A lovely bird, with azure wings. 
And song that said a thousand things, 

And seemed to say them all for me ! 
I never saw its like before, 285 

I ne'er shall see its likeness more : 
It seemed like me to w^ant a mate, 
But was not half so desolate. 
And it was come to love me when 
None lived to love me so again, 290 

And cheering from my dungeon's brink, 
Had brought me back to feel and think. 
I know not if it late were free, 

Or broke its cage to perch on mine, 
But knowing well captivity, 295 

Sweet bird ! I could not wish for thine ! 
Or if it were, in winged guise, 

SELECTIONS — 3 



34 Lord Byron 

A visitant from Paradise ; 

For — Heaven forgive that thought ! the while 

Which made me both to weep and smile — 300 

I sometimes deemed that it might be 

My brother's soul come down to me ; 

But then at last away it flew, 

And then 'twas mortal well I knew, 

For he would never thus have flown — 305 

And left me twice so doubly lone, — 

Lone — as the corse within its shroud, 

Lone — as a solitary cloud, 

A single cloud on a sunny day. 
While all the rest of heaven is clear, 310 

A frown upon the atmosphere, 
That hath no business to appear 

When skies are blue, and earth is gay. 

XI 

A kind of change came in my fate, 
My keepers grew compassionate ; 315 

I know not what had made them so, 
. They were inured to sights of woe. 
But so it was : — my broken chain 
With links unfastened did remain. 
And it was liberty to stride 320 

Along my cell from side to side, 
And up and down, and then athwart, 
And tread it over every part ; 
And round the pillars one by one, 
Returning where my walk begun, 325 



Selected Poems ^^ 

Avoiding only, as I trod, 

My brothers' graves without a sod ; 

For if I thought with heedless tread 

My step profaned their lowly bed, 

My breath came gaspingly and thick, 330 

And my crushed heart felt blind and sick. 

XII 

I made a footing in the wall, 

It was not therefrom to escape, 
For I had buried one and all, 

Who loved me in a human shape ; 335 

And the whole earth would henceforth be 
A wider prison unto me : 
No child — no sire — no kin had I, 
No partner in my misery ; 

I thought of this, and I was glad, 340 

For thought of them had made me mad ; 
But I was curious to ascend 
To my barred windows, and to bend 
Once more, upon the mountains high. 
The quiet of a loving eye. 345 

XIII 

I saw them — and they were the same, 

They were not changed like me in frame ; 

I saw their thousand years of snow 

On high — their wide long lake below. 

And the blue Rhone in fullest flow ; 350 



^6 Lord Byron 

I heard the torrents leap and gush 

O'er channelled rock and broken bush ; 

I saw the white-walled distant town, , 

And whiter sails go skimming down ; 

And then there was a little isle, 355 

Which in my very face did smile, 

The only one in view ; 
A small green isle, it seemed no more, 
Scarce broader than my dungeon floor, 
But in it there were three tall trees, 360 

And o'er it blew the mountain breeze. 
And by it there were waters flowing. 
And on it there were young flowers growing, 

Of gentle breath and hue. 
The fish swam by the castle wall, 365 

And they seemed joyous each and all ; 
The eagle rode the rising blast, 
Methought he never flew so fast 
As then to me he seemed to fly ; 
And then new tears came in my eye, 370 

And I felt troubled — and would fain 
I had not left my recent chain ; 
And when I did descend again. 
The darkness of my dim abode 
Fell on me as a heavy load ; 375 

It was as is a new-dug grave. 
Closing o'er one we sought to save, — 
And yet my glance, too much opprest, 
Had almost need of such a rest. 



Selected Poems 



37 



XIV 



It might be months, or years, or days — 380 

I kept no count, I took no note — 
I had no hope my eyes to raise, 

And clear them of their dreary mote ; 
At last men came to set me free ; 

I asked not why, and recked not where ; 385 

It was at length the same to me, 
Fettered or fetterless to be, 

I learned to love despair. 
And thus when they appeared at last, 
And all my bonds aside were cast, 390 

These heavy walls to me had grown 
A hermitage — and all my own ! 
And half I felt as they were come 
To tear me from a second home : 
With spiders I had friendship made, 395 

And watched them in their sullen trade, 
Had seen the mice by moonlight play, 
And why should I feel less than they ? 
We were all inmates of one place. 
And I, the monarch of each race, 400 

Had power to kill — yet, strange to tell ! 
In quiet we had learned to dwell ; 
My very chains and I grew friends, 
So much a long communion tends 
To make us what we are : — even I 405 

Regained my freedom with a sigh. 



3 8 Lord Byron 



II 

Mazeppa 



'Twas after dread Pultowa's day, 

When Fortune left the royal Swede — 
Around a slaughtered army lay, 

No more to combat and to bleed. 410 

The power and glory of the war. 

Faithless as their vain votaries, men, 
Had passed to the triumphant Czar, 

And Moscow's walls were safe again — 
Until a day more dark and drear 415 

And a more memorable year. 
Should give to slaughter and to shame 
A mightier host and haughtier name ; 
A greater wreck, a deeper fall, 
A shock to one — a thunderbolt to all. 420 



Such was the hazard of the die ; 

The wounded Charles was taught to fly 

By day and night through field and flood. 

Stained with his own and subjects' blood ; 

For thousands fell that flight to aid : 425 

And not a voice was heard to upbraid 



Selected Poems 39 

Ambition in his humbled hour, 

When Truth had nought to dread from Power. 

His horse was slain, and Gieta gave 

His own — and died the Russians' slave. 430 

This, too, sinks after many a league 

Of well-sustained, but vain fatigue ; 

And in the depth of forests darkling, 

The watch-fires in the distance sparkling — 

The beacons of surrounding foes — 435 

A King must lay his limbs at length. 

Are these the laurels and repose 
For which the nations strain their strength ? 
They laid him by a savage tree, 
In outworn Nature's agony ; 440 

His wounds w^ere stiff, his limbs were stark ; 
The heavy hour was chill and dark ; 
The fever in his blood forbade 
A transient slumber's fitful aid : 
And thus it was ; but yet through all, 445 

Kinglike the Monarch bore his fall. 
And made, in this extreme of ill, 
His pangs the vassals of his will : 
All silent and subdued were they. 
As once the nations round him lay. 450 

III 

A band of chiefs ! — alas ! how few, 

Since but the fleeting of a day 
Had thinned it ; but this wreck was true 

And chivalrous : upon the clay 



40 Lord Byron 

Each sate him down, all sad and mute, 455 

Beside his monarch and his steed ; 
For danger levels man and brute. 

And all are fellows in their need. 
Among the rest, Mazeppa made 
His pillow in an old oak's shade — 460 

Himself as rough, and scarce less old, 
The Ukraine's Hetman, calm and bold ; 
But first, outspent with this long course. 
The Cossack prince rubbed down his horse. 
And made for him a leafy bed, 465 

And smoothed his fetlocks and his mane, 

And slacked his girth, and stripped his rein. 
And joyed to see how well he fed ; 
For until now he had the dread 
His wearied courser might refuse 470 

To browse beneath the midnight dews : 
But he was hardy as his lord. 
And little cared for bed and board ; 
But spirited and docile too, 

Whate'er was to be done, would do. 475 

Shaggy and swift, and strong of limb, 
All Tartar-Hke he carried him ; 
Obeyed his voice, and came to call, 
And knew him in the midst of all : 
Though thousands were around, — and Night, 480 
Without a star, pursued her flight, — 
That steed from sunset until dawn 
His chief would follow like a fawn. 



Selected Poems 41 



IV 

This done, Mazeppa spread his cloak, 

And laid his lance beneath his oak, 485 

Felt if his arms in order good 

The long day's march had well withstood — 

If still the powder filled the pan, 

And flints unloosened kept their lock — 
His sabre's hilt and scabbard felt, 490 

And whether they had chafed his belt ; 
And next the venerable man. 
From out his havresack and can. 

Prepared and spread his slender stock ; 
And to the Monarch and his men 495 

The whole or portion offered then 
With far less of inquietude 
Than courtiers at a banquet would. 
And Charles of this his slender share 
With smiles partook a moment there, 500 

To force of cheer a greater show, 
And seem above both wounds and woe ; — 
And then he said — " Of all our band, 
Though firm of heart and strong of hand. 
In skirmish, march, or forage, none 505 

Can less have said or more have done 
Than thee, Mazeppa ! On the earth 
So fit a pair had never birth. 
Since Alexander's days till now. 
As thy Bucephalus ^ and thou : 510 

1 The horse of Alexander the Great. 



42 Lord Byron 

All Scythia's fame to thine should yield 

For pricking on o'er flood and field." 

Mazeppa answered — " 111 betide 

The school wherein I learned to ride ! " 

Quoth Charles — " Old Hetman, wherefore so, 515 

Since thou hast learned the art so well ? " 

Mazeppa said — " 'Twere long to tell ; 

And we have many a league to go, 

With every now and then a blow, 

And ten to one at least the foe, 520 

Before our steeds may graze at ease, 

Beyond the swift Borysthenes : ^ 

And, Sire, your limbs have need of rest. 

And I will be the sentinel 

Of this your troop." — " But I request," 525 

Said Sweden's monarch, " Thou wilt tell 

This tale of thine, and I may reap, 

Perchance, from this the boon of sleep ; 

For at this moment from my eyes 

The hope of present slumber flies." 530 

"Well, Sire, with such a hope, I'll track 

My seventy years of memory back : 

I think 'twas in my twentieth spring, — 

Ay, 'twas, — when Casimir was king — 

John Casimir, — I was his page 535 

Six summers, in my earlier age : 

A learned monarch, faith ! was he. 

And most unlike your Majesty; 

1 The Dnieper. 



Selected Poems 43 

He made no wars, and did not gain 

New realms to lose tiiem back again; 540 

And (save debates in Warsaw's diet) 

He reigned in most unseemly quiet ; 

Not that he had no cares to vex ; 

He loved the muses and the Sex ; 

And sometimes these so froward are, 545 

They made him wish himself at war ; 

But soon his wrath being o'er, he took 

Another mistress — or new book : 

And then he gave prodigious fetes — 

All Warsaw gathered round his gates 550 

To gaze upon his splendid court, 

And dames, and chiefs, of princely port. 

He was the Polish Solomon, 

So sung his poets, all but one. 

Who, being unpensioned, made a satire, 555 

And boasted that he could not flatter. 

It was a court of jousts and mimes, 

Where every courtier tried at rhymes ; 

Even I for once produced some verses, 

And signed my odes ' Despairing Thyrsis.' 560 

There was a certain Palatine, 

A Count of far and high descent, 
Rich as a salt or silver mine ; 
And he was proud, ye may divine, 

As if from Heaven he had been sent ; 565 

He had such wealth in blood and ore 

As few could match beneath the throne ; 
And he would gaze upon his store, 



44 Lord Byron 

And o'er his pedigree would pore, 

Until by some confusion led, 570 

Which almost looked like want of head, 

He thought their merits were his own. 
His wife was not of this opinion ; 

His junior she by thirty years, 
Grew daily tired of his dominion ; 575 

And, after wishes, hopes, and fears, 

To Virtue a few farewell tears, 
A restless dream or two — some glances 
At Warsaw's youth — some songs, and dances, 
Awaited but the usual chances, 580 

Those happy accidents which render 
The coldest dames so very tender. 
To deck her Count with titles given, 
'Tis said, as passports into Heaven ; 
But, strange to say, they rarely boast 585 

Of these, who have deserved them most. 



" I was a goodly stripling then ; 

At seventy years I so may say. 
That there were few, or boys or men, 

Who, in my dawning time of day, 590 

Of vassal or of knight's degree. 
Could vie in vanities with me ; 
For I had strength — youth — gaiety, 
A port, not like to this ye see. 
But smooth, as all is rugged now ; 595 

For Time, and Care, and War, have ploughed 



Selected Poems 



45 



My very soul from out my brow ; 

And thus I should be disavowed 
By all my kind and kin, could they 
Compare my day and yesterday ; 600 

This change was wrought, too, long ere age 
Had ta'en my features for his page : 
With years, ye know, have not declined 
My strength — my courage — or my mind, 
Or at this hour I should not be 605 

Telling old tales beneath a tree. 
With starless skies my canopy. 

But let me on : Theresa's form — 
Methinks it glides before me now, 
Between me and yon chestnut's bough, 610 

The memory is so quick and warm ; 
And yet I find no words to tell 
The shape of her I loved so well : 
She had the Asiatic eye. 

Such as our Turkish neighbourhood 615 

Hath mingled with our Polish blood, 
Dark as above us is the sky ; 
But through it stole a tender light, 
Like the first moonrise of midnight ; 
Large, dark, and swimming in the stream, 620 

Which seemed to melt to its own beam ; 
All love, half languor, and half fire. 
Like saints that at the stake expire, 
And lift their raptured looks on high, 
As though it were a joy to die. 625 

A brow like a midsummer lake, 



46 , Lord Byron 

Transparent with the sun therein, 
When waves no murmur dare to make, 

And Heaven beholds her face within. 
A cheek and Hp — but why proceed ? 630 

I loved her then, I love her still ; 
And such as I am, love indeed 

In fierce extremes — in good and ill. 
But still we love even in our rage, 
And haunted to our very age 635 

With the vain shadow of the past, — 
As is Mazeppa to the last. 

VI 

" We met — we gazed — I saw, and sighed ; 

She did not speak, and yet replied ; 

There are ten thousand tones and signs 640 

We hear and see, but none defines — 

Involuntary sparks of thought, 

Which strike from out the heart o'erwrought. 

And form a strange intelligence, 

Alike mysterious and intense, 645 

Which link the burning chain that binds. 

Without their will, young hearts and minds ; 

Conveying, as the electric wire, 

We know not how, the absorbing fire. 

I saw, and sighed — in silence wept, 650 

And still reluctant distance kept, 

Until I was made known to her, 

And we might then and there confer 

Without suspicion — then, even then, 



Selected Poems 47 

I longed, and was resolved to speak ; 655 

But on my lips they died again, 

The accents tremulous and weak, 
Until one hour. — There is a game, 

A frivolous and foolish play, 

Wherewith we while away the day ; 660 

It is — I have forgot the name — 
And we to this, it seems, were set, 
By some strange chance, which I forget : 
I recked not if I won or lost. 

It was enough for me to be 665 

So near to hear, and oh ! to see 
The being whom I loved the most. 
I watched her as a sentinel, 
(May ours this dark night watch as well !) 

Until I saw, and thus it was, 670 

That she was pensive, nor perceived 
Her occupation, nor was grieved 
Nor glad to lose or gain ; but still 
Played on for hours, as if her will 
Vet bound her to the place, though not 675 

That hers might be the winning lot. 

Then through my brain the thought did pass, 
Even as a flash of lightning there, 
That there was something in her air 
Which would not doom me to despair ; 680 

And on the thought my words broke forth. 

All incoherent as they were ; 
Their eloquence w^as little worth. 
But yet she listened — 'tis enough — 



5 Lord Byron 

Who listens once will listen twice ; 685 

Her heart, be sure, is not of ice — 
And one refusal no rebuff. 

VII 

" I loved, and was beloved again — 

They tell me. Sire, you never knew 

Those gentle frailties ; if 'tis true, 690 

I shorten all my joy or pain ; 
To you 'twould seem absurd as vain ; 
But all men are not born to reign, 
Or o'er their passions, or as you 
Thus o'er themselves and nations too. 695 

I am — or rather was — a Prince, 

A chief of thousands, and could lead 

Them on where each would foremost bleed ; 
But could not o'er myself evince 
The like control — But to resume : 700 

I loved, and was beloved again \ 
In sooth, it is a happy doom, 

But yet where happiest ends in pain. — 
We met in secret, and the hour 

Which led me to that lady's bower 705 

Was fiery Expectation's dower. 
My days and nights were nothing — all 
Except that hour which doth recall, 
In the long lapse from youth to age. 

No other like itself : I'd give 710 

The Ukraine back again to live 
It o'er once more, and be a page. 



Selected Poems 49 

The happy page, who was the lord 

Of one soft heart, and his own sword. 

And had no other gem nor wealth, 715 

Save Nature's gift of Youth and Health. 

We met in secret — doubly sweet, 

Some say, they find it so to meet ; 

I know not that — I would have given 

My life but to have called her mine 720 

In the full view of Earth and Heaven ; 

For I did oft and long repine 
That we could only meet by stealth. 

VIII 

" For lovers there are many eyes, 

And such there were on us ; the Devil 725 

On such occasions should be civil — 
The Devil ! — I'm loath to do him wrong. 

It might be some untoward saint. 
Who would not be at rest too long, 

But to his pious bile gave vent — 730 

But one fair night, some lurking spies 
Surprised and seized us both. 
The Count was something more than wroth — 
I was unarmed ; but if in steel. 

All cap-a-pie from head to heel, 735 

What 'gainst their numbers could I do ? 
'Twas near his castle, far away 

From city or from succour near. 
And almost on the break of day ; 
I did not think to see another, 74° 

SELECTIONS — 4 



50 Lord Byron 

My moments seemed reduced to few ; 
And with one prayer to Mary Mother, 

And, it may be, a saint or two, 
As I resigned me to my fate, 
They led me to the castle gate : 745 

Theresa's doom I never knew, 
Our lot was henceforth separate. — 
An angry man, ye may opine. 
Was he, the proud Count Palatine ; 
And he had reason good to be, 750 

But he was most enraged lest such 

An accident should chance to touch 
Upon his future pedigree ; 
Nor less amazed, that such a blot 
His noble 'scutcheon should have got, 755 

While he was highest of his line ; 

Because unto himself he seemed 

The first of men, nor less he deemed 
In others' eyes, and most in mine. 
'Sdeath ! with 3. page — perchance a king 760 

Had reconciled him to the thing ; 
But with a stripling of a page — 
I felt — but cannot paint his rage. 

IX 

" * Bring forth the horse ! ' — the horse was brought ! 
In truth, he was a noble steed, 765 

A Tartar of the Ukraine breed, 
Who looked as though the speed of thought 
Were in his limbs ; but he was wild, 



Selected Poems 



51 



Wild as the wild deer, and untaught, 
With spur and bridle undefiled — 770 

'Twas but a day he had been caught; 
And snorting, with erected mane, 
And struggling fiercely, but in vain. 
In the full foam of wrath and dread 
To me the desert-born was led : 775 

They bound me on, that menial throng, 
Upon his back with many a thong ; 
They loosed him with a sudden lash — 
Away ! — away ! — and on we dash ! — 
Torrents less rapid and less rash. 780 



" Away ! — away ! — My breath was gone, 

I saw not where he hurried on : 

'Twas scarcely yet the break of day. 

And on he foamed — away ! — away ! 

The last of human sounds which rose, 785 

As I was darted from my foes, 

Was the wild shout of savage laughter, 

Which on the wind came roaring after 

A moment from that rabble rout : 

With sudden wrath I wrenched my head, 790 

And snapped the cord, which to the mane 

Had bound my neck in lieu of rein, 
And, writhing half my form about. 
Howled back my curse ; but 'midst the tread. 
The thunder of my courser's speed, 795 

Perchance they did not hear nor heed : 



52 Lord Byron 

It vexes me — for I would fain 

Have paid their insult back again. 

I paid it well in after days : 

There is not of that castle gate, 800 

Its drawbridge and portcullis' weight, 

Stone — bar — moat — bridge — or barrier left ; 

Nor of its fields a blade of grass, 

Save what grows on a ridge of wall, 

Where stood the hearth-stone of the hall ; 805 

And many a time ye there might pass. 
Nor dream that e'er the fortress was. 
I saw its turrets in a blaze, 
Their crackling battlements all cleft, 

And the hot lead pour down like rain 810 

From off the scorched and blackening roof 
Whose thickness was not vengeance-proof. 

They little thought that day of pain, 
When launched, as on the lightning's flash, 
They bade me to destruction dash, 815 

That one day I should come again, 
With twice five thousand horse, to thank 

The Count for his uncourteous ride. 
They played me then a bitter prank, 

When, with the wild horse for my guide, 820 

They bound me to his foaming flank : 
At length I played them one as frank — 
For Time at last sets all things even — 

And if we do but watch the hour. 

There never yet was human power 825 

Which could evade, if unforgiven, 



Selected Poems 53 

The patient search and vigil long 
Of him who treasures up a wrong. 

XI 

" Away ! — away ! — my steed and I, 

Upon the pinions of the wind ! 830 

All human dwellings left behind, 
We sped like meteors through the sky, 
When with its crackling sound the night 
Is chequered with the Northern light. 
Town — village — none were on our track, 835 

But a wild plain of far extent, 
And bounded by a forest black ; 

And, save the scarce seen battlement 
On distant heights of some strong hold, 
Against the Tartars built of old, 840 

No trace of man. The year before 
A Turkish army had marched o'er ; 
And where the Spahi's hoof hath trod, 
The verdure flies the bloody sod : 
The sky was dull, and dim, and grey, 845 

And a low breeze crept moaning by — 

I could have answered with a sigh — 
But fast we fled, — away ! — away ! — 
And I could neither sigh nor pray ; 
And my cold sweat-drops fell like rain 850 

Upon the courser's bristling mane ; 
But, snorting still with rage and fear, 
He flew upon his far career : 
At times I almost thought, indeed. 



54 Lord Byron 

He must have slackened in his speed ; 855 

But no — my bound and slender frame 

Was nothing to his angry might, 
And merely like a spur became : 
Each motion which I made to free 
My swoln limbs from their agony 860 

Increased his fury and affright : 
I tried my voice, — 'twas faint and low — 
But yet he swerved as from a blow ; 
And, starting to each accent, sprang 
As from a sudden trumpet's clang : 865 

Meantime my cords were wet with gore. 
Which, oozing through my limbs, ran o'er ; 
And in my tongue the thirst became 
A something fierier far than flame. 

XII 

" We neared the wild wood — 'twas so wide, 870 

I saw no bounds on either side : 

'Twas studded with old sturdy trees, 

That bent not to the roughest breeze 

Which howls do\vn from Siberia's waste, 

And strips the forest in its haste, — 875 

But these were few and far between, 

Set thick with shrubs more young and green, 

Luxuriant with their annual leaves. 

Ere strown by those autumnal eves 

That nip the forest's foliage dead, 880 

Discoloured with a lifeless red. 

Which stands thereon like stiffened gore 



Selected Poems 55 

Upon the slain when battle's o'er ; 

And some long winter's night hath shed 

Its frost o'er every tombless head — 885 

So cold and stark — the raven's beak 

May peck unpierced each frozen cheek : 

'Twas a wild waste of underwood, 

And here and there a chestnut stood, 

The strong oak, and the hardy pine ; 890 

But far apart — and well it were. 
Or else a different lot were mine — 

The boughs gave way, and did not tear 
My limbs ; and I found strength to bear 
My wounds, already scarred with cold ; 895 

My bonds forbade to loose my hold. 
We rustled through the leaves like wind, — 
Left shrubs, and trees, and w^olves behind ; 
By night I heard them on the track. 
Their troop came hard upon our back, 900 

With their long gallop, which can tire 
The hound's deep hate, and hunter's fire : 
Where'er we flew they followed on, 
Nor left us with the morning sun ; 
Behind I saw them, scarce a rood, 905 

At day-break winding through the wood, 
And through the night had heard their feet 
Their stealing, rustling step repeat. 
Oh ! how I wished for spear or sword, 
At least to die amidst the horde, 91° 

And perish — if it must be so — 
At bay, destroying many a foe ! 



56 Lord Byron 

When first my courser's race begun, 

I wished the goal already won ; 

But now I doubted strength and speed : 915 

Vain doubt ! his swift and savage breed 

Had nerved him like the mountain-roe — 

Nor faster falls the blinding snow 

Which whelms the peasant near the door 

Whose threshold he shall cross no more, 920 

Bewildered with the dazzling blast, 

Than through the forest-paths he passed — 

Untired, untamed, and worse than wild — 

All furious as a favoured child 

Balked of its wish ; or — fiercer still — 925 

A woman piqued — who has her will ! 

XIII 

" The wood was passed ; 'twas more than noon, 

But chill the air, although in June ; 

Or it might be my veins ran cold — 

Prolonged endurance tames the bold ; 930 

And I was then not what I seem, 

But headlong as a wintry stream, 

And wore my feelings out before 

I well could count their causes o'er : 

And what with fury, fear, and wrath, 935 

The tortures which beset my path — 

Cold — hunger — sorrow — shame — distress — 

Thus bound in Nature's nakedness ; 

Sprung from a race whose rising blood 

When stirred beyond its calmer mood, 940 



Selected Poems 57 

And trodden hard upon, is like 

The rattle-snake's, in act to strike — 

What marvel if this worn-out trunk 

Beneath its woes a moment sunk ? 

The earth gave way, the skies rolled round, 945 

I seemed to sink upon the ground ; 

But erred — for I was fastly bound. 

My heart turned sick, my brain grew sore, 

And throbbed awhile, then beat no more : 

The skies spun like a mighty wheel ; 950 

I saw the trees like drunkards reel, 

And a slight flash sprang o'er my eyes, 

Which saw no farther. He who dies 

Can die no more than then I died, 

O'ertortured by that ghastly ride. 955 

I felt the blackness come and go, 

And strove to wake ; but could not make 
My senses climb up from below : 
I felt as on a plank at sea, 

When all the waves that dash o'er thee, 960 

At the same time upheave and whelm. 
And hurl thee towards a desert realm. 
My undulating life was as 
The fancied lights that flitting pass 
Our shut eyes in deep midnight, when 965 

Fever begins upon the brain ; 
But soon it passed, with little pain, 

But a confusion worse than such : 

I own that I should deem it much, 
Dying, to feel the same again ; 97° 



58 Lord Byron 

And yet I do suppose we must 
Feel far more e'er we turn to dust ! 
No matter ! I have bared my brow 
Full in Death's face — before — and now. 

XIV 

" My thoughts came back. Where was I ? Cold, 975 

And numb, and giddy : pulse by pulse 
Life reassumed its lingering hold, 
And throb by throb, — till grown a pang 

Which for a moment would convulse, 

My blood refiowed, though thick and chill ; 980 

My ear with uncouth noises rang. 

My heart began once more to thrill ; 
My sight returned, though dim ; alas ! 
And thickened, as it were, with glass. 
Methought the dash of waves was nigh ; 985 

There was a gleam too of the sky. 
Studded with stars ; — it is no dream ; 
The wild horse swims the wilder stream ! 
The bright broad river's gushing tide 
Sweeps, winding onward, far and wide, 990 

And we are half-way, struggling o'er 
To yon unknown and silent shore. 
The waters broke my hollow trance. 
And with a temporary strength 

My stiffened limbs were rebaptized. 995 

My courser's broad breast proudly braves, 
And dashes off the ascending waves, 
And onward we advance! 



Selected Poems 59 

We reach the slippery shore at length, 

A haven I but little prized, 1000 

For all behind was dark and drear, 
And all before was night and fear. 
How many hours of night or day 
In those suspended pangs I lay, 

I could not tell ; I scarcely knew 1005 

If this were human breath I drew. 

XV 

" With glossy skin, and dripping mane, 

And reeling limbs, and reeking flank. 
The wild steed's sinewy nerves still strain 

Up the repelling bank. 1010 

We gain the top : a boundless plain 
Spreads through the shadow of the night, 

And onward, onward, onward — seems, 

Like precipices in our dreams, 
To stretch beyond the sight ; 1015 

And here and there a speck of white, 

Or scattered spot of dusky green. 
In masses broke into the light, 
As rose the moon upon my right : 

But nought distinctly seen 1020 

In the dim waste would indicate 
The omen of a cottage gate ; 
No twinkling taper from afar 
Stood like a hospitable star ; 

Not even an ignis-fatuus ^ rose 1025 

1 Will o' the wisp. 



6o Lord Byron 

To make him merry with my woes ; 

That very cheat had cheered me then I 
Although detected, welcome still, 
Reminding me, through every ill, 

Of the abodes of men. 1030 

XVI 

" Onward we went — but slack and slow ; 

His savage force at length o'erspent, 
The drooping courser, faint and low, 

All feebly foaming went : 
A sickly infant had had power 1035 

To guide him forward in that hour ! 

But, useless all to me. 
His new-born tameness nought availed — 
My limbs were bound ; my force had failed, 

Perchance, had they been free. 1040 

With feeble effort still I tried 
To rend the bonds so starkly tied. 

But still it was in vain ; 
My limbs were only wrung the more. 
And soon the idle strife gave o'er, 1045 

Which but prolonged their pain. 
The dizzy race seemed almost done, 
Although no goal was nearly won : 
Some streaks announced the coming sun — 

How slow, alas ! he came ! 1050 

Methought that mist of dawning grey 
Would never dapple into day. 
How heavily it rolled away ! 



Selected Poems 6i 

Before the eastern flame 
Rose crimson, and deposed the stars, 1055 

And called the radiance from their cars. 
And filled the earth, from his deep throne, 
With lonely lustre, all his own. 

XVII 

" Uprose the sun ; the mists were curled 

Back from the solitary world 1060 

Which lay around — behind — before. 

What booted it to traverse o'er 

Plain — forest — river ? Man nor brute, 

Nor dint of hoof, nor print of foot, 

Lay in the wild luxuriant soil — 1065 

No sign of travel, none of toil — 

The very air was mute : 

And not an insect's shrill small horn, 

Nor matin bird's new voice was borne 

From herb nor thicket. Many a werst, 1070 

Panting as if his heart would burst, 

The weary brute still staggered on ; 

And still we were — or seemed — alone : 

At length, while reeling on our w^ay, 

Methought I heard a courser neigh, 1075 

From out yon tuft of blackening firs. 

Is it the wind those branches stirs ? 

No, no ! From out the forest prance 

A trampling troop ; I see them come ! 
In one vast squadron they advance ! 1080 

I strove to cry — my lips were dumb 1 



62 Lord Byron 

The steeds rush on in plunging pride ; 

But where are they the reins to guide ? 

A thousand horse, and none to ride ! 

With flowing tail, and flying mane, 10S5 

Wide nostrils never stretched by pain, 

Mouths bloodless to the bit or rein. 

And feet that iron never shod, 

And flanks unscarred by spur or rod, . 

A thousand horse, the wild, the free, 1090 

Like waves that follow o'er the sea, 

Came thickly thundering on. 
As if our faint approach to meet ! 
The sight re-nerved my courser's feet, 
A moment staggering, feebly fleet, 1095 

A moment, with a faint low neigh. 

He answered, and then fell ! 
With gasps and glazing eyes he lay, 

And reeking limbs immovable. 

His first and last career is done ! noo 

On came the troop — they saw him stoop, 

They saw me strangely bound along 

His back with many a bloody thong. 
They stop — they start — they snuff the air, 
Gallop a moment here and there, 1105 

Approach, retire, wheel round and round. 
Then plunging back with sudden bound, 
Headed by one black mighty steed, 
Who seemed the Patriarch of his breed, 

Without a single speck or hair mo 

Of white upon his shaggy hide ; 



Selected Poems 63 

They snort — they foam — neigh — they swerve aside, 
And backward to the forest fly, 
By instinct, from a human eye. 

They left me there to my despair, 1115 

Linked to the dead and stiffening wretch, 
Whose Hfeless hmbs beneath me stretch, 
Reheved from that unwonted weight, 
From whence I could not extricate 
Nor him nor me — and there we lay, 1120 

The dying on the dead ! 
I little deemed another day 

Would see my houseless, helpless head. 

" And there from morn to twilight bound, 

I felt the heavy hours toil round, 1125 

With just enough of life to see 

My last of suns go down on me, 

In hopeless certainty of mind, 

That makes us feel at length resigned 

To that which our foreboding years 1130 

Present the w^orst and last of fears : 

Inevitable — even a boon. 

Nor more unkind for coming soon. 

Yet shunned and dreaded wuth such care, 

As if it only w^ere a snare 1135 

That Prudence might escape : 
At times both wished for and implored, 
At times sought with self-pointed sw^ord, 
Yet still a dark and hideous close 
To even intolerable woes, 114° 



64 Lord Byron 

And welcome in no shape. 
And, strange to say, the sons of pleasure, 
They who have revelled beyond measure 
In beauty, wassail, wine, and treasure, 
Die calm, or calmer, oft than he 1145 

Whose heritage was Misery : 
For he who hath in turn run through 
All that was beautiful and new, 

Hath -nought to hope, and nought to leave ; 
And, save the future, (which is viewed 1150 

Not quite as men are base or good. 
But as their nerves may be endued,) 

With nought perhaps to grieve : 
The wretch still hopes his woes must end, 
And Death, whom he should deem his friend, 1155 
Appears, to his distempered eyes, 
Arrived to rob him of his prize. 
The tree of his new Paradise. 
To-morrow would have given him all, 
Repaid his pangs, repaired his fall ; 1160 

To-morrow would have been the first 
Of days no more deplored or curst. 
But bright, and long, and beckoning years. 
Seen dazzling through the mist of tears, 
Guerdon of many a painful hour ; 1165 

To-morrow would have given him power 
To rule — to shine — to smite — to save — 
And must it dawn upon his grave ? 



Selected Poems 65 

XVIII 

" The sun was sinking — still I lay 

Chained to the chill and stiffening steed ! 1170 
I thought to mingle there our clay ; 

And my dim eyes of death had need, 

No hope arose of being freed. 
I cast my last looks up the sky, 

And there between me and the sun 1175 

I saw the expecting raven fly, 
Who scarce would wait till both should die, 

Ere his repast begun ; 
He flew, and perched, then flew once more. 
And each time nearer than before ; 1180 

I saw his wing through twilight flit. 
And once so near me he alit 

I could have smote, but lacked the strength ; 
But the slight motion of my hand. 
And feeble scratching of the sand, 1185 

The exerted throat's faint struggling noise, 
Which scarcely could be called a voice. 

Together scared him off at length. 
I know no more — my latest dream 

Is something of a lovely star 1190 

Which fixed my dull eyes from afar, 
And went and came with wandering beam. 
And of the cold — dull — swimming — dense 
Sensation of recurring sense. 

And then subsiding back to death, 1195 

And then again a little breath, 

SELECTIONS — S 



66 Lord Byron 

A little thrill — a short suspense, 

An icy sickness curdling o'er 
My heart, and sparks that crossed my brain — 
A gasp — a throb — a start of pain, 1200 

A sigh — and nothing more. 

XIX 

" I woke — where was I ? — Do I see 

A human face look down on me ? 

And doth a roof above me close ? 

Do these limbs on a couch repose ? 1205 

Is this a chamber where I lie ? 

And is it mortal yon bright eye, 

That watches me with gentle glance ? 

I closed my own again once more. 
As doubtful that my former trance 1210 

Could not as yet be o'er. 
A slender girl, long-haired, and tall, 
Sate watching by the cottage wall : 
The sparkle of her eye I caught. 
Even with my first return of thought ; 1215 

For ever and anon she threw 

A prying, pitying glance on me 

With her black eyes so wild and free : 
I gazed, and gazed, until I knew 

No vision it could be, — 1220 

But that I lived, and was released 
From adding to the vulture's feast: 
And when the Cossack maid beheld 
My hea\7 eyes at length unsealed, 



Selected Poems 67 

She smiled — and I essayed to speak, 1225 

But failed — and she approached, and made 

With lip and finger signs that said, 
I must not strive as yet to break 
The silence, till my strength should be 
Enough to leave my accents free ; 1230 

And then her hand on mine she laid, 
And smoothed the pillow for my head, 
And stole along on tiptoe tread. 

And gently oped the door, and spake 
In whispers — ne'er was voice so sweet ! 1235 

Even music followed her light feet ; — 

But those she called were not awake, 
And she went forth ; but, ere she passed, 
Another look on me she cast. 

Another sign she made, to say, 1240 

That I had nought to fear, that all 
Were near, at my command or call. 

And she would not delay 
Her due return : — while she was gone, 
Methought I felt too much alone. 1245 

XX 

'' She came with mother and with sire — 

What need of more? — I will not tire 

With long recital of the rest. 

Since I became the Cossack's guest. 

They found me senseless on the plain, 1250 

They bore me to the nearest hut, 
They brought me into life again — 



68 Lord Byron 

Me — one day o'er their realm to reign ! 

Thus the vain fool who strove to glut 
His rage, refining on my pain, 1255 

Sent me forth to the wilderness, 
Bound — naked — bleeding — and alone, 
To pass the desert to a throne, — 

What mortal his own doom may guess? 

Let none despond, let none despair ! 1260 

To-morrow the Borysthenes 
May see our coursers graze at ease 
Upon his Turkish bank, — and never 
Had I such welcome for a river 

As I shall yield when safely there. 1265 

Comrades, good night " — The Hetman threw 

His length beneath the oak-tree shade. 

With leafy couch already made — 
A bed nor comfortless nor new 
To him, who took his rest whene'er 1270 

The hour arrived, no matter where : 

His eyes the hastening slumbers steep. — 
And if ye marvel Charles forgot 
To thank his tale, he wondered not, — 

The King had been an hour asleep ! 1275 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 
I. Life 

William Wordsworth, Lake Poet and Laureate of 
England, has told his own story, and described the 
growth of his mind, in the poem called The Prelude. 
If you have read this, you know pretty thoroughly what 
kind of man he was, what sort of life he led, where he 
went, and what he did, and saw, and felt, and thought. 
The remaining facts in his biography are few and 
simple. 

Some of these he has recorded for us in the memoirs 
which he dictated to his nephew, a former bishop of 
Lincoln. " I was born," he said, " at Cockermouth, 
in Cumberland, on April 7th, 1770, the second son of 
John Wordsworth, attorn ey-at-law. . . . My mother was 
Anne, only daughter of William Cookson, mercer, of 
Penrith. . . . My grandfather was the first of the name 
of Wordsworth who came into Westmoreland. . . . He 
was descended from a family who had been settled at 
Peniston, in Yorkshire, . . . probably before the Nor- 
man Conquest. . . . The time of my infancy and early 
boyhood was passed partly at Cockermouth, and partly 
with my mother's parents at Penrith, where my mother, 
in the year 1778, died of a decline. . . . My father 

6g 



yo William Wordsworth 

never recovered his usual cheerfulness of mind after 
this loss, and died wh'en I was in my fourteenth year, a 
school-boy, just returned from Hawkshead, whither I 
had been sent with my elder brother Richard, in my 
ninth year. 

" I remember my mother only in some few situations, 
one of which was her pinning a nosegay to my breast, 
when I was going to say the catechism in the church. 
. . . She once said . . . that the only one of her five 
children about whose future life she was anxious was 
William ; and he, she said, would be remarkable, either 
for good or for evil. The cause of this was, that I was 
of a stiff, moody, and violent temper ; so much so that 
I remember going into the attics of my grandfather's 
house at Penrith, upon some indignity having been put 
upon me, with the intention of destroying myself with 
one of the foils, which I knew was kept there. I took 
the foil in my hand, but my heart failed me." 

In spite of this anecdote, it is certain that Wordsworth, 
as a boy, was not at all morose or given to brooding. 
Of his early days at school he had " little to say, but 
that they were very happy ones " ; he would have us 
believe that his happiness lay in being free to read 
whatever books he liked ; but we know, better than he 
could have told us, that he was not the sort of boy who 
stays apart, by himself, with his head in a book. Some 
poets, like Thomas Gray, have been of that sort, — shy 
and sickly boys at school, writing Latin verses instead 
of playing cricket. Wordsworth, however, played all 
the games and had all the fun with the other boys. 



Introduction 71 

Don Quixote^ Gil Bias, Gulliver^s Travels^ and the 
many books he read were not what set his young spirit 
alight and aUve. The boy who was father to this man, 
could skate, and handle a boat, and climb trees with the 
best of his schoolmates. A passage in The Prelude 
tells how, when skating on winter nights with his com- 
panions, playing at hare and hounds over the ice, 
Wordsworth sometimes glanced aside, alone, left the 
shouting racers, tried to cut across the flying' reflection 
of a star, and chased its gleam along the glassy surface ; 
or how, when he had let the wind carry him along, " the 
solitary cliffs wheeled by " in shadow, spinning past — 

" . . . as if the earth had rolled 
With visible motion her diurnal round ! " 

The joy and excitement of such active play, of running 
about the fields or woods by day and night, first woke 
and stirred the deep impulses of genius. 

After this boyhood of happy liberty among the lakes, 
Wordsworth went up, in October, 1787, to St. John's 
College, Cambridge. Spenser, Ben Jonson, Marlowe, 
Dryden, Milton, and Gray had preceded him in that 
university of the English poets ; Coleridge and Byron 
were to succeed him ; but though not least among these 
shining names, as an undergraduate Wordsworth did not 
distinguish himself. He entered, a rustic and backward 
youth of seventeen, and four years later, taking his B.A. 
degree, left Cambridge with no definite plans for his 
future career. 

He now lived for a short time, and on a small allow- 



72 William Wordsworth 

ance, in London. But he was not for the city, and — 
except in reveries like that of Poor Susan or the noble 
Sonnet on Westminster Bridge^ — the city was not for 
him. He soon passed on, landed in France in Novem- 
ber, 1 79 1, was fired with the enthusiasms of the French 
Revolution, and within a year, feeling that all the hopes 
of man were at stake, and burning to become a " patriot 
of the world," had determined to come forward as a 
leader of the Girondist party. Prudent friends at home, 
however, stopped his allowance, and forced him unwill- 
ingly to return to England. 

The reaction and the disappointment which fell upon 
so many friends of the Revolution, became with Words- 
worth, for several years, a settled gloom. This was 
soon lightened, however, and gradually dispersed, by 
the companionship of his sister Dorothy. In Dorset- 
shire first, where Coleridge visited them in 1797 ; then 
at Alfoxden in the Quantock Hills, where they had 
Coleridge for neighbour ; and — by the close of the cen- 
tury — at Grasmere among the Lakes, the brother and 
sister lived in close intimacy and affection ; Dorothy 
Wordsworth's journal is therefore the best gateway to 
her brother's poems. His marriage to Mary Hutchin- 
son of Penrith, in 1802, brought him great and lifelong 
happiness, and formed a triple alliance in quiet felicity. 
The sonnets called Persofial Talk will show you how 
they lived. They had a small boat on the lake, a small 
orchard and garden, and a still smaller cottage, covered 
with roses, honeysuckles, and a bright profusion -of 
scarlet beans. The sister, however, was the more con- 



Introduction 73 

stant companion of Wordsworth's walks, journeys, and 
hours of inspiration. The wife, though to her husband's 
eyes " a phantom of dehght," was also "not too bright 
or good for human nature's daily food," and appears to 
have stayed by the cottage while the other two tramped 
among the hills and shores, talking, observing, admiring 
together. Both women understood the poet's genius, 
but it was Dorothy who evoked and cherished it, who 
brought him out of his dejection over the state of man, 
and confirmed his love of nature. In 1793, when his 
first small book of poems was published, she saw and 
named not only their merits but their faults. In 1797 
she accompanied him and Coleridge on the famous 
walking tour when the Ancient Mariner was planned, 
and when the daily communion of these two great 
poets shaped the first volume of the Lyrical Ballads. 
These ballads were to be romantic in two senses. Cole- 
ridge chose to write on supernatural subjects, in such a 
way as to produce in his readers " that willing suspen- 
sion of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes 
poetic faith"; Wordsworth, to write on familiar subjects 
in a simple style, and to cast a romantic light over ordi- 
nary persons and places. A year later the volume was 
published ; and if you have read the poem with which 
it ends, the Lines written above Tintei-n Abbey, you not 
only know a good part of Wordsworth's message to the 
world, but can see what a great and fortunate debt he 
owed to his sister. 

They made many journeys together : to Germany 
in 1798, where Wordsworth, wandering the frozen 



74 William Wordsworth 

streets of Goslar in a fur pelisse and dogskin bonnet, 
composed Lucy Gray, Ruth, Nutting, and the Poefs 
Epitaph, and began The Pi^elude ; to France in 1802, 
when he wrote the sonnets on Westminster Bridge 
and Calais Sands; in 1803 to Scotland, where they 
met the Highland Girl on the shore of Loch Lomond ; 
in 1820, with Mrs. Wordsworth and two or three 
friends, to Switzerland and Italy. These tours, and 
many which the poet made alone or with other compan- 
ions, all helped him to write new things, or to finish 
things that he had begun. 

But Wordsworth was never a wanderer ; he was a 
home-keeper and a Cumberland dalesman. He lived 
at Grasmere with his wife and sister, and his children 
— John, Dora, Thomas, Catherine, and William. He 
was deeply attached to them all ; and when Catherine 
and Thomas died, he could not endure living in the 
Parsonage of Grasmere, where the neighbouring church- 
yard continually reminded him of his loss. In 18 13, 
therefore, the Wordsworths moved to Rydal Mount, 
above Rydal Lake. 

Here the poet passed the remainder of his days. 
In 18 1 4 Lord Lonsdale obtained for him a humble 
post as distributer of stamps for the county of West- 
moreland. The work of this office left him free, how- 
ever, to pace his terraces and murmur his verses (the 
cottagers were " glad to hear him booing about "), where* 
every year a thrush sang in the tall ash tree and doves 
fluttered their osier cage among laburnum branches. 
Rydal — Mount and Water — cannot be separated 



Introduction 75 

from his name, — the name of that poet who bequeathed 
to EngHsh poetry all the beauties of the English lake 
country, and who, hearing " the still, sad music of 
humanity," was profoundly inspired by 

"A motion and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things." 

Thoughts, impulses, intimations which had lain dead 
for more than a century, others which had never before 
found utterance, flooded his mind daily among the 
Cumbrian hills. It was a rugged country, of hearty 
rains, of visionary mists on heights and in valleys, of 
still, clear, and delicate autumns. '^ The presence of 
a lake," he once wrote, " is indispensable to exhibit in 
perfection one of these [autumn] days ; . . . while look- 
ing on the unruffled waters, . . . the imagination by 
their aid is carried into recesses of feeling otherwise 
impenetrable." Masses of rock, hurled down from the 
slopes into the water, lay '' like stranded ships." 
Tarns, or solitary pools, gleamed black and sullen, with 
"bold, heath-clad promontories." The houses chem- 
selves, of unhewn stone, roofed with slates so old and 
rough as to be overgrown with lichens, mosses, ferns, 
and flowers, were "clothed in a vegetable garb," and 
appeared "to be received into the bosom of the living 
principle of things." — This was Wordsworth's country 
for the rest of his life. 

While living here, he published in 18 14 the long 
poem called The Excursion. He published various 



76 William Wordsworth 

selections of poems down to the year of his death. 
Nearly all his best work, however, he did between 1 798 
and 1 8 18. This was the summer and flood-tide of 
his powers. His later poems, like the Memorials 
(1822) and the Ecclesiastical Sketches in the Poems of 
1822, show a gradual decline and stiffening, and — 
by comparison — a hollow repetition. The early glory 
faded into the light of common day. But in these 
years Wordsworth had waited, and the world had 
come round to him. Critics had long derided him ; 
the Edinburgh Review, attacking The Excursion, had 
told him "this would never do." But by 1837 he 
received grateful acknowledgments from " the vast 
continents of America." Two years later he was 
given the honorary degree of D.C.L. at Oxford. In 
1842 he Avas pensioned by the Crown with ;^3oo a 
year, as a mark of public respect. In 1843, when his 
friend and admirer Southey died, leaving vacant the 
office of Poet Laureate, national sentiment could ap- 
prove no successor but Wordsworth. The gray-haired 
poet, kneeling, kissed the hand of the young Queen, 
ruler of the people whose life and literature he had 
enriched so vastly. 

He died at Rydal Mount, on April 23, 1850, full of 
years, and wisdom, and honour. All his days he had 
worked hard, lived simply, and been in earnest. He 
had never wavered from his purpose, — "to console 
the afflicted ; to add sunshine to daylight by making 
the happy happier ; to teach the young and gracious of 
every age to see, to think, and to feel." 



Introduction 77 

II. Poems 

Boys and girls often find it hard to know Wordsworth 
well enough to love him, partly because he lacks so 
much of what makes other great poets attractive. He 
lacks, for example, direct outspoken passion. Othello 
and Lear are as far from him as the lyrics of Sappho 
and " My Love is like a red, red Rose." Neither drama 
nor epic is within Wordsworth's power : Michael, Mar- 
garet, the Wanderer, and the rest, are but christened 
aspects of the poet's thought, and The Excursion, with 
all its whistle-blowing, signal guns, and other prelimina- 
ries of departure, has been wickedly compared to Rob- 
inson Crusoe's first boat. 

But what appears to be Wordsworth's weakness you 
will soon discover to be his strength, for although his 
range is narrow, within that range he is a master beyond 
all other poets in our language. The novelty, the al- 
most complete originality, of his attitude and feeling 
toward Nature, as they delayed any wide acceptance of 
his work until he was more than middle-aged, so they 
have kept for Wordsworth a place that is all his own. 
Before he wrote there had been vague hints and gleams 
in English poetry of what is in Wordsworth the strong- 
est impulse of his imagination. This most deeply felt 
impulse is the unbroken consciousness of a soul in 
Nature. Under rock and hill and vernal wood Words- 
worth is sure of a spiritual presence, — a presence that 
animates all phenomena, from the most awe-inspiring 
spectacles of cloud and storm and lightning, to " the 



7 8 William Wordsworth 

meanest flower that blows/' For one groping sugges- 
tion in earlier poets of the single, unseen life within 
the many aspects that solicit and charm the senses, 
there are in this poet a hundred outspoken expressions 
of belief. None is plainer or more impressive than the 
following, which must do duty for many: — 

" Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower, 
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths ; 
And 'tis my faith that every flower 
Enjoys the very air it breathes. 

" The birds around me hopp'd and play'd, 
Their thoughts I cannot measure, — 
But the least motion which they made 
It seemed a thrill of pleasure. 

"The budding twigs spread out their fan 
To catch the breezy air; 
And I must think, do all I can, 
That there was pleasure there." 

You already know how much time Wordsworth passed 
with trees, flowers, birds, and mountain streams. When 
you consider how much more he found than the rest of 
us would find — without a genius to interpret for us — 
in these wonderful friends and teachers of his, it is not 
strange that there should have been " a fire in his eye, 
as if he saw something in objects more than the outward 
appearance." Not strange, either, that Hazlitt, who 
thus read the fire of Wordsworth's eye, should have 
spoken of his head as having a " drooping weight of 
thought and expression." The brilliant critic goes on. 



Introduction 



79 



recalling (invaluably for you and me) his impressionable 
youth and first aquaintance with poets : " We went 
over to All-Foxden again the day following, and Words- 
worth read us the story of Peter Bell in the open air, 
and the comment upon it by his face and voice was very 
different from that of some later critics ! Whatever 
might be thought of the poem, ' his face was as a book 
where men might read strange matters,' and he 
announced the fate of his hero in prophetic tones. 
There is a chaunt in the recitation both of Coleridge 
and Wordsworth which acts as a spell upon the hearer, 
and disarms the judgment." 

It is becoming pretty clear, is it not, that Words- 
worth took seriously and sincerely — as indeed, he took 
all things — his share in the plan of The Lyrical Ballads. 
As we have told you, Coleridge was to induce for his 
" shadows of imagination that willing suspension of 
disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith." 
Wordsworth's task was to be the poetical opposite of 
Coleridge's. Listen intently while the wonderful poet 
of the more-than-natural tells what was to be the func- 
tion of the wonderful poet of the natural. " Mr. W'ords- 
worth, on the other hand," says Coleridge, " was to 
propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of 
novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling 
analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's 
attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it 
to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before 
us ; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in conse- 
quence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, 



8o William Wordsworth 

we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and 
hearts that neither feel nor understand." 

" The loveHness and the wonders of the world before 
us !" To make us see what we have never seen before, 
to lift the veil of use and wont, and thus cause us to see 
again wdth delight what has become dull and common 
in our eyes, — this is indeed Wordsworth's peculiar 
power. After the first decade of poetic production, no 
doubt, he exercised his benign power with swiftly dimin- 
ishing frequency, and by the year 1818 it had almost 
wholly departed. Mystery and magic had so forsaken 
him, and left him so reduced in imagination, so hope- 
lessly the prey of prosy, moralizing rhetoric, that the 
Queen made her Laureate of a man who, though he 
*' uttered nothing base," had for many unlaurelled years 
— and the same barrenness was to continue through the 
few years in which his brow was wreathed — had for a 
weary space uttered nothing of importance to those who 
regard poetry as one of the few most sacred elements 
of life. 

But if you will put aside all that Wordsworth wrote 
before 1798 and most of what he wrote after 1808, if 
then you will lay yourselves open to the magical influence 
of his briefer (and those the best) numbers, you are 
likely — I venture to prophesy — to become ungrudging 
students of the most original English poet since Chau- 
cer. Nor, in this free discipleship, need you trouble 
yourselves much about Wordsworth's " theory of poetic 
diction." His practice was better than his theory, and 
reached all the way from the almost bald simplicity of 



Introduction 8i 

We a?'e Seven and the perfect simplicity of The 
Daffodils^ to the Miltonic pomp of certain of the 
sonnets, and the full splendours of the great English 
poetic vocabulary in The Yew Trees. If there is no 
need of minute study of diction in your first reading of 
Wordsworth, still less is it necessary for you to inquire 
into Wordsworth's philosophy, or to attempt to reconcile 
his famous pantheism — hardened into dogma in The 
Exciirsio7i — with an ever closer adherence to the doc- 
trines of conventional religion. Rather content your- 
selves with the simplicity, the sheer beauty and joy, the 
" emotion remembered in tranquillity," of the pieces in 
which Wordsworth is most " impelled," in which he is 
most the child of Nature and the friend of Man. Of this 
character, happily, are, almost without exception, the 
poems offered to you here. Your teachers will explain 
whatever may need explanation in the celebrated Ode. 
For the rest, an elementary knowledge of your own lan- 
guage, a first-hand acquaintance with the country (by 
land and water), and a good understanding with flowers, 
trees, birds, and natural-minded people, will enable you 
to read Wordsworth with pleasure, and afterward to 
qualify as pupils in his school. 

But, we hear the head of the class explain, outdoors 
in England is very different from outdoors in this 
country. English oaks are not our oaks, their cuckoo 
is not ours, the skylark is rara avis, found only in cages, 
yew trees are not found at all, American rivers are not 
streams that a boy can jump, and primroses and daffo- 
dils — so far from growing by the river's brim or along 

SELECTIONS — 6 



82 William Wordsworth 

the margin of a bay — lead an unpoetic life in pots. 
All these differences undoubtedly exist, and the head 
of the class might go on to explain not only that neither 
" dalesmen " nor peasants live under the Stars and 
Stripes, but that in social structure and customs there 
is a century as well as a world of variance between 
the England of Wordsworth's early manhood and the 
America of to-day. All these disparities are as un- 
doubted as, for your purpose in reading Wordsworth, 
they are unimportant. For, even when he seems most 
to localize his subjects, the picture, the poem, the 
impassioned meditation of the verse, will make an ap- 
peal to readers of kindred minds that is not dulled by 
time or distance. Wordsworth often speaks of Nature 
as if she had been born and brought up in the Lake 
Country, but what he says of her is lingua franca. It 
is for lovers of great poetry everywhere. 



III. Bibliographical Note 

Texts. — Poetical Works^ with introduction by John Mor- 
ley, Globe edition; Selections, ed. E. Dowden ; Selections, 
with essay by Matthew Arnold (Golden Treasury Series) ; 
Prefaces and Essays 071 Poetry, ed. A. J. George; Selections 
from Prose Writings^ ed. C. M. Gayley. 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by F. W. H. Myers (Eng- 
lish Men of Letters) ; Early Life, a study of the Prelude, 
by E. Legouis, translated by J. M. Matthews. Essays, by 
J. R. Lowell {Atnong My Books and Democracy and Other 
Addresses') ; by Sir Leslie Stephen {Hours in a Library) ; by 



Introduction 83 

Walter Bagehot {^Literary Studies) ; by William Hazlitt 
{The Spirit of the Age) ; by R. W. Church {Dante and Other 
Essays) ; by Walter Pater {Appreciations) ; by R. H. Hut- 
ton {Literary Essays and Essays Theological and Literary) ; 
by D. Masson {Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Other Es- 
says). A Primer of Wordsworth, by L. Magnus. Helps 
to the Study of Arnold'' s Wordsworth, by R. Wilson. 



SELECTIONS FROM WORDSWORTH 

PAGE 

She was a Phantom of delight 85 

She dwelt among the untrodden ways ■ . . .86 

I travell'd among unknown men 86 

The Education of Nature 87 

A slumber did my spirit seal 89 

Lucy Gray 89 

To A Distant Friend 92 

Desideria 93 

Ode to Duty 93 

England and Switzerland, 1802 96 

On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic . . 96 

London, 1802 97 

The Same 98 

When I have borne in memory what has tamed . 98 

Simon Lee the Old Huntsman 99 

A Lesson 102 

The Affliction of Margaret 103 

To A Skylark 106 

The Green Linnet 107 



84 William Wordsworth 



PACK 

To THE Cuckoo 109 

Upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802 . . .110 
Composed at Neidpath Castlk, the Proper it of Lord 

QUEENSBERRY, 1803 Ill 

Admonition to a Traveller iii 

To THE Highland Girl of Inversneyde . . . .112 

The Reaper 115 

The Reverie of Poor Susan 116 

The Daffodils 117 

To the Daisy 118 

Yarrow Unvisited: 1803 120 

Yarrow Visited :• September, 1814 . . . . .122 

By the Sea 126 

To Sleep 126 

The Inner Vision 127 

Written in Early Spring 128 

Ruth: or the Influences of Nature . . . .129 

Nature and the Poet 138 

Glen-Almain, the Narrow Glen 141 

The World is too much with us ; late and soon . 142 
Within King's College Chapel, Cambkh)ge . . .143 

The Two April Mornings 143 

The Fountain 146 

The Trosachs 149 

My heart leaps up when I behold . . . .149 
Ode on Intimations of Immortality . . . .150 



SELECTIONS FROM 
WORDSWORTH 



She was a Phantom of delight 

When first she gleam 'd upon my sight ; 

A lovely Apparition, sent 

To be a moment's ornament; 

Her eyes as stars of twilight fair ; 5 

Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair ; 

But all things else about her drawn 

From May-time and the cheerful dawn ; 

A dancing shape, an image gay, 

To haunt, to startle, and waylay. 10 

I saw her upon nearer view, 
A Spirit, yet a Woman too ! 
Her household motions light and free, 
And steps of virgin-liberty ; 

A countenance in which did meet 15 

Sweet records, promises as sweet ; 
A creature not too bright or good 
For human nature's daily food. 
For transient sorrows, simple wiles. 
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. 20 
85 



86 William Wordsworth 

And now I see with eye serene 

The very pulse of the machine ; 

A being breathing thoughtful breath, 

A traveller between life and death : 

The reason firm, the temperate will, 25 

Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill ; 

A perfect Woman, nobly plann'd 

To warn, to comfort, and command ; 

And yet a Spirit still, and bright 

With something of an angel-light. 30 

II 

She dwelt among the untrodden ways 

Beside the springs of Dove ; 
A maid whom there were none to praise, 

And very few to love. 

A violet by a mossy stone 35 

Half-hidden from the eye ! 
— Fair as a star, when only one 

Is shining in the sky. 

She lived unknown, and few could know 

When Lucy ceased to be ; 40 

But she is in her grave, and, oh, 
The difference to me ! 

Ill 

I travell'd among unknown men 
In lands beyond the sea ; 



Selected Poems 87 

Nor, England ! did I know till then 45 

What love I bore to thee. 

'Tis past, that melancholy dream ! 

Nor will I quit thy shore 
A second time ; for still I seem 

To love thee more and more. 50 

Among thy mountains did I feel 

The joy of my desire ; 
And she I cherish'd turn'd her wheel 

Beside an Enghsh fire. 

Thy mornings show'd, thy nights conceal'd 55 

The bowers where Lucy play'd ; 
And thine too is the last green field 

That Lucy's eyes survey 'd. 

IV 

The Education of Nature 

Three years she grew in sun and shower ; 

Then Nature said, " A lovelier flower 60 

On earth was never sown : 

This Child I to myself will take ; 

She shall be mine, and I will make 

A lady of my own. 

" Myself will to my darling be 65 

Both law and impulse : and with me 
The girl, in rock and plain, 



88 William Wordsworth 

In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, 

Shall feel an overseeing power 

To kindle or restrain. 70 

" She shall be sportive as the fawn 

That wild with glee across the lawn 

Or up the mountain springs ; 

And hers shall be the breathing balm. 

And hers the silence and the calm 75 

Of mute insensate things. 

" The floating clouds their state shall lend 

To her ; for her the willow bend ; 

Nor shall she fail to see 

Ev'n in the motions of the storm 80 

Grace that shall mould the maiden's form 

By silent sympathy. 

'• The stars of midnight shall be dear 

To her ; and she shall lean her ear 

In many a secret place 85 

Where rivulets dance their wayward round, 

And beauty born of murmuring sound 

Shall pass into her face. 

" And vital feelings of delight 

Shall rear her form to stately height, 90 

Her virgin bosom swell ; 

Such thoughts to Lucy I will give 

While she and I together live 

Here in this happy dell." 



Selected Poems 89 

r 

Thus Nature spake — The work was done — 95 

How soon my Lucy's race was run ! 

She died, and left to me 

This heath, this calm and quiet scene ; 

The memory of what has been, 

And never more will be. 100 



A slumber did my spirit seal ; 

I had no human fears : 
She seem'd a thing that could not feel 

The touch of earthly years. 

No motion has she now, no force ; 105 

She neither hears nor sees ; 
Roll'd round in earth's diurnal course 

With rocks, and stones, and trees. 

VI 

Lucy Gray 

Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray : 

And when I cross'd the wild, no 

I chanced to see at break of day 

The solitary child. 

No mate, no comrade Lucy knew ; 

She dwelt on a wide moor, 

The sweetest thing that ever grew 115 

Beside a human door ! 



90 William Wordsworth 

You yet may spy the fawn at play, 

The hare upon the green ; 

But the sweet face of Lucy Gray 

Will never more be seen. 120 

" To-night will be a stormy night — 
You to the town must go ; 
And take a lantern, Child, to light 
Your mother through the snow." 

*' That, Father ! will I gladly do : 125 

'Tis scarcely afternoon — 

The minster-clock^ has just struck two, 

And yonder is the moon ! " 

At this the father raised his hook, 

And snapp'd a faggot-band ; 130 

He plied his work ; — and Lucy took 

The lantern in her hand. 

Not blither is the mountain roe : 

With many a wanton stroke 

Her feet disperse the powdery snow, 135 

That rises up like smoke. 

The storm came on before its time : 

She wander'd up and down ; 

And many a hill did Lucy climb : 

But never reach'd the town. 14c 

1 A clock in a church-tower. 



Selected Poems 91 

The wretched parents all that night 
Went shouting far and wide ; 
But there was neither sound nor sight 
To serve them for a guide. 

At day-break on a hill they stood 145 

That overlook'd the moor ; 

And thence they saw the bridge of wood 

A furlong from their door. 

They wept — and, turning homeward, cried 
" In heaven we all shall meet ! " 150 

— When in the snow the mother spied 
The print of Lucy's feet. 

Then downwards from the steep hill's edge 
They track'd the footmarks small ; 
And through the broken hawthorn hedge, 155 
And by the long stone-wall : 

And then an open field they cross'd : 

The marks were still the same ; 

They track'd them on, nor ever lost ; 

And to the bridge they came : 160 

They follow'd from the snowy bank 
Those footmarks, one by one, 
Into the middle of the plank ; 
And further there were none ! 



92 William Wordsworth 

— Yet some maintain that to this day 165 

She is a hving child ; 

That you may see sweet Lucy Gray 

Upon the lonesome wild. 

O'er rough and smooth she trips along, 
And never looks behind ; 170 

And sings a solitary song 
That whistles in the wind. 



VII 

To A Distant Friend 

Why art thou silent ? Is thy love a plant 

Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air 

Of absence withers what was once so fair ? 175 

Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant ? 

Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant, 
Bound to thy service with unceasing care — 
The mind's least generous wish a mendicant 
For nought but what thy happiness could spare. 180 

Speak! — though this soft warm heart, once free to 

hold 
A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine. 
Be left more desolate, more dreary cold 

Than a forsaken bird's-nest fill'd with snow 

'Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine — 185 

Speak, that my torturing doubts their end may know ! 



Selected Poems 93 

VIII 

Desideria 

Surprized by joy — impatient as the wind — 

I turn'd to share the transport — Oh ! with whom 

But Thee — deep buried in the silent tomb, 

That spot which no vicissitude can find ? 190 

Love, faithful love recall'd thee to my mind — 
But how could I forget thee ? Through what power 
Even for the least division of an hour 
Have I been so beguiled as to be blind 

To my most grievous loss ! — That thought's return 
Was the worst pang that sorrow ever bore 196 

Save one, one only, when I stood forlorn, 

Knowing my heart's best treasure was no more ; 

That neither present time, nor years unborn 

Could to my sight that heavenly face restore. 200 

IX 

Ode to Duty 

Stern Daughter of the Voice of God ! 

O Duty ! if that name thou love 

Who art a light to guide, a rod 

To check the erring, and reprove ; 

Thou who art victory and law 205 

When empty terrors overawe ; 



94 



William Wordsworth 



From vain temptations dost set free, 
And calm'st the weary strife of frail humanity ! 

There are who ask not if thine eye 
Be on them ; who, in love and truth 210 

Where no misgiving is, rely 
Upon the genial sense of youth : 
Glad hearts ! without reproach or blot, 
Who do thy work, and know it not : 
Oh ! if through confidence misplaced 215 

They fail, thy saving arms, dread Power ! around them 
cast. 

Serene will be our days and bright 
And happy will our nature be 
When love is an unerring light, 

And joy its own security. 220 

And they a blissful course may hold 
Ev'n now, who, not unwisely bold, 
Live in the spirit of this creed : 
Yet seek thy firm support, according to their need. 

I, loving freedom, and untried, 225 

No sport of every random gust, 
Yet being to myself a guide. 
Too blindly have reposed my trust : 
And oft, when in my heart was heard 
Thy timely mandate, I deferr'd 230 

The task, in smoother walks to stray ; 
But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may. 



Selected Poems 95 

Through no disturbance of my soul 
Or strong compunction in me wrought, 
I supplicate for thy control, 235 

But in the quietness of thought : 
Me this uncharter'd freedom tires ; 
I feel the weight of chance-desires : 
My hopes no more must change their name ; 
I long for a repose that ever is the same. 240 

Stern Lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear 
The Godhead's most benignant grace ; 
Nor know we anything so fair 
As is the smile upon thy face : 

Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, 245 

And fragrance in thy footing treads ; 
Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong ; 
And the most ancient Heavens, through Thee, are fresh 
and strong. 

To humbler functions, awful Power ! 
I call thee : I myself commend 250 

Unto thy guidance from this hour ; 
Oh let my weakness have an end ! 
Give unto me, made lowly wise, 
The spirit of self-sacrifice ; 

The confidence of reason give ; 255 

And in the light of truth thy Bondman let me live. 



96 William Wordsworth 



England and Switzerland, 1802 

Two Voices are there ; one is of the Sea, 

One of the Mountains ; each a mighty voice : 

In both from age to age thou didst rejoice, 

They were thy chosen music, Liberty ! 260 

There came a tyrant, and with holy glee 
Thou fought'st against him, — but hast vainly striven : 
Thou from thy Alpine holds at length art driven, 
Where not a torrent murmurs heard by thee. 

— Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft ; 265 
Then cleave, O cleave to that which still is left — 
For, high-soul'd Maid, what sorrow would it be 

That Mountain floods should thunder as before. 

And Ocean bellow from his rocky shore. 

And neither awful Voice be heard by Thee ! 270 

XI 

On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic 

Once did She hold the gorgeous East in fee 
And was the safeguard of the West ; the worth 
Of Venice did not fall below her birth, 
Venice, the eldest child of Liberty. 

She was a maiden city, bright and free ; 275 

No guile seduced, no force could violate ; 
And when she took unto herself a mate, 
She must espouse the everlasting Sea. 



Selected Poems 97 

And what if she had seen those glories fade. 

Those titles vanish, and that strength decay, — 280 

Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid 

When her long life hath reach'd its final day : 
Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade 
Of that which once was great is pass'd away. 



XII 
London, 1802 

a. 

O Friend ! I know not which way I must look 285 

For comfort, being, as I am, opprest 

To think that now our life is only drest 

For show ; mean handy-work of craftsman, cook. 

Or groom ! — We must run glittering like a brook 
In the open sunshine, or we are unblest ; 290 

The wealthiest man among us is the best : 
No grandeur now in nature or in book 

Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense, 

This is idolatry ; and these we adore : 

Plain living and high thinking are no more : 295 

The homely beauty of the good old cause 
Is gone ; our peace, our fearful innocence. 
And pure religion breathing household laws. 

SELECTIONS — 7 



gS William Wordsworth 

XIII 

The Same 

Milton ! thou shouldst be living at this hour : 
England hath need of thee : she is a fen 300 

Of stagnant waters : altar, sword, and pen, 
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, 

Have forfeited their ancient English dower 

Of inward happiness. We are selfish men : 

Oh ! raise us up, return to us again ; 305 

And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. 

Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart : 

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea, 

Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free ; 

So didst thou travel on life's common way 310 

In cheerful godliness ; and yet thy heart 
The lowliest duties on herself did lay. 

XIV 

When I have borne in memory what has tamed 
Great nations ; how ennobling thoughts depart 
When men change swords for ledgers, and desert 315 
The student's bower for gold, — some fears unnamed 

I had, my Country ! — am I to be blamed ? 

Now, when I think of thee, and what thou art, 

Verily, in the bottom of my heart 

Of those unfilial fears I am ashamed. 320 



Selected Poems 99 

For dearly must we prize thee ; we who find 
In thee a buhvark for the cause of men ; 
And I by my affection was beguiled : 

What wonder if a Poet now and then, 

Among the many movements of his mind, 325 

Felt for thee as a lover or a child ! 

XV 

Simon Lee the Old Huntsman 

In the sweet shire of Cardigan, . 

Not far from pleasant Ivor Hall, 

An old man dwells, a little man, — 

'Tis said he once was tall. 330 

Full five-and-thirty years he lived 

A running huntsman merry ; 

And still the centre of his cheek 

Is red as a ripe cherry. 



335 



No man like him the horn could sound, 

And hill and valley rang with glee. 

When Echo bandied, round and round. 

The halloo of Simon Lee. 

In those proud days he little cared 

For husbandry or tillage ; 340 

To blither tasks did Simon rouse 

The sleepers of the village. 

He all the country could outrun, 

Could leave both man and horse behind ; 



lOO William Wordsworth 

And often, ere the chase was done 345 

He reel'd and was stone-blind. 

And still there's something in the world 

At which his heart rejoices ; 

For when the chiming hounds are out, 

He dearly loves their voices. 350 

But oh the heavy change ! — bereft 

Of health, strength, friends and kindred, see ! 

Old Simon to the world is left 

In liveried poverty : — 

His master's dead, and no one now 355 

Dwells in the Hall of Ivor ; 

Men, dogs, and horses, all are dead ; 

He is the sole survivor. 

And he is lean and he is sick, 

His body, dwindled and awry, 360 

Rests upon ankles swoln and thick ; 

His legs are thin and dry. 

One prop he has, and only one, — 

His wife, an aged woman. 

Lives with him, near the waterfall, 365 

Upon the village common. 

Beside their moss-grown hut of clay, 

Not twenty paces from the door, 

A scrap of land they have, but they 

Are poorest of the poor. 370 

This scrap of land he from the heath 

Enclosed when he was stronger ; 



Selected Poems loi 

But what to them avails the land 
Which he can till no longer? 

Oft, working by her husband's side, 375 

Ruth does what Simon cannot do ; 

For she, with scanty cause for pride, 

Is stouter of the two. 

And, though you with your utmost skill 

From labour could not wean them, 380 

'Tis little, very little, all 

That they can do between them. 

Few months of life has he in store 

As he to you will tell. 

For still, the more he works, the more 385 

Do his weak ankles swell. 

My gentle Reader, I perceive 

How patiently you've waited, 

And now I fear that you expect 

Some tale will be related. 390 

O Reader ! had you in your mind 

Such stores as silent thought can bring, 

O gentle Reader ! you would find 

A tale in every thing. 

What more I have to say is short, 395 

And you must kindly take it ; 

It is no tale ; but, should you think, 

Perhaps a tale you'll make it. 

One summer-day I chanced to see 

This old Man doing all he could 400 



I02 William Wordsworth 

To unearth the root of an old tree. 

A stump of rotten wood. 

The mattock totter'd in his hand ; 

So vain was his endeavour 

That at the root of the old tree 405 

He might have work'd for ever. 

' You're overtask'd, good Simon Lee, 

Give me your tool,' to him I said ; 

And at the word right gladly he 

Received my proffer'd aid. 410 

I struck, and with a single blow 

The tangled root I sever'd. 

At which the poor old man so long 

And vainly had endeavour'd. 

The tears into his eyes were brought, 415 

And thanks and praises seem'd to run 

So fast out of his heart, I thought 

They never would have done. 

— I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deed 

With coldness still returning ; 420 

Alas ! the gratitude of men 

Hath oftener left me mourning. 

XVI 

A Lesson 

There is a Flower, the lesser Celandine, 
That shrinks like many more from cold and rain, 
And the first moment that the sun may shine, 425 
Bright as the sun himself, 'tis out again ! 



Selected Poems 103 

When hailstones have been falHng, swarm on swarm, 

Or blasts the green field and the trees distrest, 

Oft have I seen it muffled up from harm 

In close self-shelter, like a thing at rest. 430 

But lately, one rough day, this Flower I past, 
And recognized it, though an alter'd form. 
Now standing forth an offering to the blast. 
And buffeted at will by rain and storm. 

I stopp'd and said, with inly-mutter'd voice, 435 

' It doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold ; 
This neither is its courage nor its choice, 
But its necessity in being old. 

' The sunshine may not cheer it, nor the dew ; 
It cannot help itself in its decay ; 440 

Stiff in its members, wither'd, changed of hue,' — 
And, in my spleen, I smiled that it was grey. 

To be a prodigal's favourite — then, worse truth, 

A miser's pensioner — behold our lot! 

O Man ! that from thy fair and shining youth 445 

Age might but take the things Youth needed not ! 

XVII 

The Affliction of Margaret 

Where art thou, my beloved Son, 

Where art thou, worse to me than dead ? 

Oh find me, prosperous or undone ! 

Or if the grave be now thy bed, 450 



I04 William Wordsworth 

Why am I ignorant of the same 
That I may rest ; and neither blame 
Nor sorrow may attend thy name ? 

Seven years, alas ! to have received 

No tidings of an only child — 455 

To have despair'd, have hoped, believed, 

And been for ever more beguiled, — 

Sometimes with thoughts of very bliss 1 

I catch at them, and then I miss ; 

Was ever darkness like to this? 460 

He was among the prime in worth, 

An object beauteous to behold ; 

Well born, well bred ; I sent him forth 

Ingenuous, innocent, and bold : 

If things ensued that wanted grace 465 

As hath been said, they were not base ; 

And never blush was on my face. 

Ah ! little doth the young-one dream 

When full of play and childish cares, 

What power is in his wildest scream 470 

Heard by his mother unawares I 

He knows it not, he cannot guess ; 

Years to a mother bring distress ; 

But do not make her love the less. 

Neglect me ! no, I suffer'd long 475 

From that ill thought ; and being blind 
Said ' Pride shall help me in my wrong : 
Kind mother have I been, as kind 



Selected Poems 105 

As ever breathed : ' and that is true ; 

I've wet my path with tears Hke dew, 480 

Weeping for him when no one knew. 

My Son, if thou be humbled, poor. 

Hopeless of honour and of gain, 

Oh ! do not dread thy mother's door ; 

Think not of me with grief and pain : 485 

I now can see with better eyes ; 

And worldly grandeur I despise 

And fortune with her gifts and lies. 

Alas ! the fowls of heaven have wings. 

And blasts of heaven will aid their flight ; 490 

They mount — how short a voyage brings 

The wanderers back to their delight ! 

Chains tie us down by land and sea ; 

And wishes, vain as mine, may be 

All that is left to comfort thee. 495 

Perhaps some dungeon hears thee groan 
Maim'd, mangled by inhuman men ; 
Or thou upon a desert thrown 
Inheritest the lion's den ; 

Or hast been summon'd to the deep 500 

Thou, thou, and all thy mates to keep 
An incommunicable^ sleep. 

I look for ghosts : but none will force 

Their way to me ; 'tis falsely said 

That there was ever intercourse 505 

1 Beyond the reach of human intercourse. 



io6 William Wordsworth 

Between the living and the dead ; 
For surely then I should have sight 
Of him I wait for day and night 
With love and longings infinite. 

My apprehensions come in crowds ; 510 

I dread the rustling of the grass ; 

The very shadows of the clouds 

Have power to shake me as they pass : 

I question things, and do not find 

One that will answer to my mind ; 515 

And all the world appears unkind. 

Beyond participation lie 

My troubles, and beyond relief : 

If any chance to heave a sigh 

They pity me, and not my grief. 520 

Then come to me, my Son, or send 

Some tidings that my woes may end ! 

I have no other earthly friend. 

XVIII 

To THE Skylark 

Ethereal minstrel ! pilgrim of the sky ! 

Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound ? 525 

Or while the wings aspire, are heart and eye 

Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground ? 

Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will. 

Those quivering wings composed, that music still ! 



Selected Poems 107 

To the last point of vision, and beyond 530 

Mount, daring warbler ! — that love-prompted strain 
— 'Twixt thee and thine a never-failing bond — 
Thrills not the less the bosom of the plain : 
Yet might'st thou seem, proud privilege ! to sing 
x^U independent of the leafy Spring. 535 

Leave to the nightingale her shady wood ; 

A privacy of glorious light is thine, 

Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood 

Of harmony, with instinct more divine ; 

Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam — 540 

True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home. 

XIX 

The Green Linnet 

Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed 

Their snow-white blossoms on my head, 

With brightest sunshine round me spread 

Of Spring's unclouded weather, 545 

In this sequester'd nook how sweet 

To sit upon my orchard-seat ! 

And flowers and birds once more to greet, 

My last year's friends together. 

One have I mark'd, the happiest guest 550 

In all this covert of the blest : 
Hail to Thee, far above the rest 
In joy of voice and pinion ! 



io8 William Wordsworth 

Thou, Linnet ! in thy green array- 
Presiding Spirit here to-day 555 
Dost lead the revels of the May ; 
And this is thy dominion. 

While birds, and butterflies, and flowers, ^ 

Make all one band of paramours, 

Thou, ranging up and down the bowers, 560 

Art sole in thy employment ; 

A Life, a Presence like the air. 

Scattering thy gladness without care, 

Too blest with any one to pair ; 

Thyself thy own enjoyment. 565 

Amid yon tuft of hazel trees 

That twinkle to the gusty breeze, 

Behold him perch 'd in ecstasies 

Yet seeming still to hover ; 

There ! where the flutter of his wings 570 

Upon his back and body flings 

Shadows and sunny glimmerings. 

That cover him all over. 

My dazzled sight he oft deceives — 

A brother of the dancing leaves ; 575 

Then flits, and from the cottage-eaves 

Pours forth his song in gushes ; 

As if by that exulting strain 

He mock'd and treated with disdain 

The voiceless Form he chose to feign, 580 

While fluttering in the bushes. 



Selected Poems 109 

XX 

To THE Cuckoo 

blithe new-comer ! I have heard, 

1 hear thee and rejoice : 

Cuckoo ! shall I call thee Bird, 

Or but a wandering Voice ? 585 

While I am lying on the grass 
Thy twofold shout I hear ; 
From hill to hill it seems to pass, 
At once far off and near. 

Though babbling only to the vale 590 

Of sunshine and of flowers, 
Thou bringest unto me a tale 
Of visionary hours. 

Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring ! 

Even yet thou art to me 595 

No bird, but an invisible thing, 

A voice, a mystery ; 

The same whom in my school-boy days 

1 listen 'd to ; that Cry 

Which made me look a thousand ways 600 

In bush, and tree, and sky. 

To seek thee did I often rove 

Through woods and on the green ; 

And thou wert still a hope, a love ; 

Still long'd for, never seen ! 605 



no William Wordsworth 

And I can listen to thee yet ; 
Can lie upon the plain 
And listen, till I do beget 
That golden time again. 

O blessed Bird ! the earth we pace 6io 

Again appears to be 

An unsubstantial, faery place, 

That is fit home for Thee ! 



XXI 

Upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802 

Earth has not anything to show more fair : 
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by 615 
A sight so touching- in its majesty : 
This City now doth like a garment wear 

The beauty of the morning : silent, bare, 
Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie 
Open unto the fields, and to the sky, — 620 

All bright and glittering in the smokeless air. 

Never did sun more beautifully steep 

In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill ; 

Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep ! 

The river glideth at its own sweet will : 625 

Dear God ! the very houses seem asleep ; 
And all that mighty heart is lying still ! 



Selected Poems 1 1 1 



XXII 



Composed at Neidpath Castle, the Property of 
Lord Queensberry, 1803 

Degenerate Douglas ! oh, the unworthy lord ! 
Whom mere despite of heart could so far please 
And love of havoc, (for with such disease 630 

Fame taxes him,) that he could send forth word 

To level with the dust a noble horde, 

A brotherhood of venerable trees, 

Leaving an ancient dome, and towers like these, 

Beggar'd and outraged ! — Many hearts deplored 635 

The fate of those old trees ; and oft with pain 

The traveller at this day will stop and gaze 

On wrongs, which Nature scarcely seems to heed : 

For shelter'd places, bosoms, nooks, and bays. 

And the pure mountains, and the gentle Tweed, 640 

And the green silent pastures, yet remain. 

XXIII 

Admonition to a Traveller 

Yes, there is holy pleasure in thine eye ! 
— The lovely Cottage in the guardian nook 
Hath stirr'd thee deeply ; with its own dear brook, 
Its own small pasture, almost its own sky ! 645 



112 William Wordsworth 

But covet not the abode ; forbear to sigh 
As many do, repining while they look ; 
Intruders — who would tear from Nature's book 
This precious leaf with harsh impiety. 

— Think what the home must be if it were thine, 650 
Even thine, though few thy wants ! — Roof, window, 

door. 
The very flowers are sacred to the Poor, 

The roses to the porch which they entwine : 

Yea, all that now enchants thee, from the day 

On which it should be touch'd, would melt away ! 655 

XXIV 

To THE Highland Girl of Inversneyde 

Sweet Highland Girl, a very shower 

Of beauty is thy earthly dower ! 

Twice seven consenting years have shed 

Their utmost bounty on thy head : 

And these gray rocks, that household lawn, 660 

Those trees — a veil just half withdrawn, 

This fall of water that doth make 

A murmur near the silent lake. 

This little bay, a quiet road 

That holds in shelter thy abode ; 665 

In truth together ye do seem 

Like something fashion'd in a dream ; 

Such forms as from their covert peep 

When earthly cares are laid asleep ! 



Selected Poems 113 

But O fair Creature ! in the light 670 

Of common day, so heavenly bright, 

I bless Thee, Vision as thou art, 

I bless thee with a human heart : 

God shield thee to thy latest years ! 

Thee neither know I nor thy peers : 675 

And yet my eyes are fill'd with tears. 

With earnest feeling I shall pray 

For thee when I am far away ; 

For never saw I mien or face 

In which more plainly I could trace 680 

Benignity and home-bred sense 

Ripening in perfect innocence. 

Here scatter'd, Hke a random seed, 

Remote from men. Thou dost not need 

The embarrass 'd look of shy distress, 685 

And maidenly shamefac^dness : 

Thou wear'st upon thy forehead clear 

The freedom of a Mountaineer : 

A face with gladness overspread ; 

Soft smiles, by human kindness bred; 69c 

And seemliness complete, that sways 

Thy courtesies, about thee plays ; 

With no restraint, but such as springs 

From quick and eager visitings 

Of thoughts that lie beyond the reach 695 

Of thy few words of English speech : 

A bondage sweetly brook'd, a strife 

That gives thy gestures grace and life ! 

SELECTIONS — 8 



114 William Wordsworth 

So have I, not unmoved in mind, 

Seen birds of tempest-loving kind — 700 

Thus beating up against the wind. 

What hand but would a garland cull 
For thee who art so beautiful ? 

happy pleasure ! here to dwell 

Beside thee in some heathy dell ; 705 

Adopt your homely w^ays, and dress, 

A shepherd, thou a shepherdess ! 

But I could frame a wish for thee 

More like a grave reality : 

Thou art to me but as a wave 710 

Of the wild sea : and I would have 

Some claim upon thee, if I could, 

Though but of common neighbourhood. 

What joy to hear thee, and to see 1 

Thy elder brother I would be, 715 

Thy father — anything to thee. 

Now thanks to Heaven ! that of its grace 
Hath led me to this lonely place : 
Joy have I had ; and going hence 

1 bear away my recompense. 720 
In spots like these it is we prize 

Our Memory, feel that she hath eyes : 

Then why should I be loth to stir? 

I feel this place was made for her ; 

To give new pleasure like the past, 725 

Continued long as life shall last. 



Selected Poems 115 

Nor am I loth, though pleased at heart, 

Sweet Highland Girl ! from thee to part ; 

For I, methinks, till I grow old 

As fair before me shall behold 730 

As I do now, the cabin small, 

The lake, the bay, the waterfall ; 

And Thee, the Spirit of them all ! 



XXV 

The Reaper 

Behold her, single in the field, 

Yon solitary Highland Lass ! 735 

Reaping and singing by herself ; 

Stop here, or gently pass ! 

Alone she cuts and binds the grain. 

And sings a melancholy strain ; 

O listen ! for the vale profound 740 

Is overflowing with the sound. 

No nightingale did ever chaunt 

More welcome notes to weary bands 

Of travellers in some shady haunt, 

Among Arabian sands ; 745 

A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard 

In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird. 

Breaking the silence of the seas 

Among the farthest Hebrides. 



ii6 William Wordsworth 

Will no one tell me what she sings ? 750 

Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow 

For old, unhappy, far-off things. 

And battles long ago : 

Or is it some more humble lay, 

Familiar matter of to-day ? 755 

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, 

That has been, and may be again ! 

Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang 

As if her song could have no ending ; 

I saw her singing at her work, 760 

And o'er the sickle bending ; — 

I listen'd, motionless and still ; 

And, as I mounted up the hill. 

The music in my heart I bore 

Long after it was heard no more. 765 

XXVI 

The Reverie of Poor Susan 

At the corner of Wood Street when daylight appears. 
Hangs a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three 

years : 
Poor Susan has pass'd by the spot, and has heard 
In the silence of morning the song of the bird. 

'Tis a note of enchantment ; what ails her ? She sees 770 
A mountain ascending, a vision of trees ; 
Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide, 
And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside. 



Selected Poems 117 

Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale 
Down which she so often has tripp'd with her pail ; 775 
And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's, 
The one only dwelling on earth that she loves. 

She looks, and her heart is in heaven : but they fade, 
The mist and th^ river, the hill and the shade ; 
The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise, 780 
And the colours have all pass'd away from her eyes ! 

XXVII 

The Daffodils 

I wander'd lonely as a cloud 

That floats on high o'er vales and hills, 

When all at once I saw a crowd, 

A host of golden daffodils, 785 

Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 

Continuous as the stars that shine 

And twinkle on the milky way. 

They stretch'd in never-ending line 790 

Along the margin of a bay ; 

Ten thousand saw I at a glance 

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 

The waves beside them danced, but they 
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee : — 795 

A Poet could not but be gay 
In such a jocund company ! 



ii8 William Wordsworth 

I gazed — and gazed — but little thought 
What wealth the show to me had brought ; 

For oft, when on my couch I lie 800 

In vacant or in pensive mood, 

They flash upon that inward eye 

Which is the bliss of solitude ; 

And then my heart with pleasure fills, 

And dances with the daffodils. 805 

XXVIII 

To THE Daisy 

With little here to do or see 

Of things that in the great world be, 

Sweet Daisy ! oft I talk to thee 

For thou art worthy, 
Thou unassuming Common-place 810 

Of Nature, with that homely face, 
And yet with something of a grace 

Which Love makes for thee ! 

Oft on the dappled turf at ease 

I sit and play with similes, 815 

Loose types of things through all degrees. 

Thoughts of thy raising ; 
And many a fond and idle name 
I give to thee, for praise or blame 
As is the humour of the game, 820 

While I am gazing. 



Selected Poems 119 

A nun demure, of lowly port ; 

Or sprightly maiden, of Love's court, 

In thy simplicity the sport 

Of all temptations ; 825 

A queen in crown of rubies drest ; 
A starveling in a scanty vest ; 
Are all, as seems to suit thee best, 

Thy appellations. 

A little Cyclops, with one eye 830 

Staring to threaten and defy. 

That thought comes next — and instantly 

The freak is over, 
The shape will vanish, and behold ! 
A silver shield with boss ^ of gold 835 

That spreads itself, some faery bold 

In fight to cover. 

I see thee glittering from afar — 

And then thou art a pretty star, 

Not quite so fair as many are 840 

In heaven above thee ! 
Yet like a star, with glittering crest. 
Self-poised in air thou seem'st to rest ; — 
May peace come never to his nest 

Who shall reprove thee ! 845 

Sweet Flower ! for by that name at last 
When all my reveries are past 
I call thee, and to that cleave fast, 
Sweet silent Creature ! 
^ Knob, or circular ornament. 



I20 William Wordsworth 

That breath'st with me in sun and air, 850 

Do thou, as thou art wont, repair 
My heart with gladness, and a share 
Of thy meek nature ! 



XXIX 

Yarrow Unvisited 

1803 

From Stirling Castle we had seen 

The mazy Forth unravell'd, 855 

Had trod the banks of Clyde and Tay 

And with the Tweed had travell'd ; 

And when we came to Clovenford, 

Then said my ' winsome Marrow,' ^ 

* Whate'er betide, w^e'll turn aside, 860 
And see the Braes of Yarrow.' 

* Let Yarrow folk, frae Selkirk town. 
Who have been buying, selling, 

Go back to Yarrow, 'tis their own, 

Each maiden to her dwelling ! 865 

On Yarrow's banks let herons feed. 

Hares couch, and rabbits burrow ; 

But we will downward wdth the Tweed, 

Nor turn aside to Yarrow. 

1 Mate. 



Selected Poems 121 

' There's Gala Water, Leader Haughs, 870 

Both lying right before us ; 

And Dryburgh, where with chiming Tweed 

The lintwhites sing in chorus ; 

There's pleasant Tiviot-dale, a land 

Made blithe with plough and harrow : 875 

Why throw away a needful day 

To go in search of Yarrow ? 

' What's Yarrow but a river bare 

That glides the dark hills under ? 

There are a thousand such elsewhere 880 

As worthy of your wonder.' 

— Strange words they seem'd of slight and scorn ; 

My True-love sigh'd for sorrow, 

And look'd me in the face, to think 

I thus could speak of Yarrow ! 885 

* O green,' said I, ' are Yarrow's holms, 

'And sweet is Yarrow flowing ! 

Fair hangs the apple frae the rock. 

But we will leave it growing. 

O'er hilly path and open strath 890 

We'll wander Scotland thorough ; 

But, though so near, we will not turn 

Into the dale of Yarrow. 

*Let beeves and home-bred kine partake 

The sweets of Burn-mill meadow ; 895 

The swan on still Saint Mary's Lake 

Float double, swan and shadow ! 



122 William Wordsworth 

We will not see them ; will not go 

To-day, nor yet to-morrow ; 

Enough if in our hearts we know 900 

There's such a place as Yarrow. 

' Be Yarrow stream unseen, unknown ! 

It must, or we shall rue it : 

We have a vision of our own, 

Ah ! why should we undo it? 905 

The treasured dreams of times long past. 

We'll keep them, winsome Marrow ! 

For when we're there, although 'tis fair, 

'Twill be another Yarrow ! 

' If Care with freezing years should come 910 

And wandering seem but folly, — 

Should we be loth to stir from home. 

And yet be melancholy ; 

Should life be dull, and spirits low, 

'Twill soothe us in our sorrow * 915 

That earth has something yet to show. 

The bonny holms of Yarrow ! ' 



XXX 

Yarrow Visited 

September^ 18 14 

And is this — Yarrow ? — This the stream 
Of which my fancy cherish'd 



Selected Poems 



123 



So faithfully, a waking dream, 920 

An image that hath perish 'd? 

O that some minstrel's harp were near 

To utter notes of gladness 

And chase this silence from the air, 

That fills my heart with sadness ! 925 

Yet why ? — a silvery current flows 

With uncontroll'd meanderings ; 

Nor have these eyes by greener hills 

Been soothed, in all my wanderings. 

And, through her depths. Saint Mary's Lake 930 

Is visibly delighted ; 

For not a feature of those hills 

Is in the mirror slighted. 

A blue sky bends o'er Yarrow Vale 

Save where that pearly whiteness 935 

Is round the rising sun diffused, 

A tender hazy brightness ; 

Mild dawn of promise ! that excludes 

All profitless dejection ; 

Though not unwilling here to admit 940 

A pensive recollection. 

Where was it that the famous Flower 

Of Yarrow Vale lay bleeding ? 

His bed perchance was yon smooth mound 

On which the herd is feeding ; 945 

And haply from this crystal pool, 

Now peaceful as the morning, 



124 William Wordsworth 

The Water-wraith ^ ascended thrice, 
And gave his doleful warning. 

Delicious is the lay that sings 950 

The haunts of happy lovers, 

The path that leads them to the grove. 

The leafy grove that covers : 

And pity sanctifies the verse 

That paints, by strength of sorrow, 955 

The unconquerable strength of love ; 

Bear witness, rueful Yarrow ! 

But thou that didst appear so fair 

To fond imagination, 

Dost rival in the light of day 960 

Her delicate creation : 

Meek loveliness is round thee spread, 

A softness still and holy : 

The grace of forest charms decay'd. 

And pastoral melancholy. 965 

That region left, the vale unfolds 

Rich groves of lofty stature, 

With Yarrow winding through the pomp 

Of cultivated nature ; 

And rising from those lofty groves 97° 

Behold a ruin hoary, 

The shatter'd front of Newark's towers, 

Renown 'd in Border story. 

1 Water-spirit. 



Selected Poems 125 

Fair scenes for childhood's opening bloom, 

For sportive youth to stray in, 975 

For manhood to enjoy his strength. 

And age to wear away in ! 

Yon cottage seems a bower of bliss, 

A covert for protection 

Of tender thoughts that nestle there 980 

The brood of chaste affection. 

How sweet on this autumnal day 

The wald-wood fruits to gather. 

And on my True-love's forehead plant 

A crest of blooming heather ! 985 

And what if I en wreathed my own ? 

'Twere no offence to reason ; 

The sober hills thus deck their brows 

To meet the wintry season. 

I see — but not by sight alone, 990 

Loved Yarrow, have I won thee ; 

A ray of Fancy still survives — 

Her sunshine plays upon thee ! 

Thy ever-youthful waters keep 

A course of lively pleasure ; 995 

And gladsome notes my lips can breathe 

Accordant to the measure. 

The vapours linger round the heights. 

They melt, and soon must vanish ; 

One hour is theirs, nor more is mine — 1000 

Sad thought ! which I would banish, 



126 William Wordsworth 

But that I know, where'er I go, 

Thy genuine image, Yarrow ! 

Will dwell with me, to heighten joy, 

And cheer my mind in sorrow. 1005 

XXXI 

By the Sea 

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free ; 
The holy time is quiet as a Nun 
Breathless with adoration ; the broad sun 
Is sinking down in its tranquillity ; 

The gentleness of heaven is on the Sea : loio 

Listen ! the mighty Being is awake, 
And doth with his eternal motion make 
A sound like thunder — everlastingly. 

Dear child ! dear girl ! that walkest with me here. 
If thou appear untouch'd by solemn thought 1015 

Thy nature is not therefore less divine : 

Thou liest in Abraham's bosom all the year, 
And worshipp'st at the Temple's inner shrine, 
God being with thee when we know it not. 

XXXII 

To Sleep 

A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by 1020 

One after one ; the sound of rain, and bees 
Murmuring ; the fall of rivers, winds and seas, 
Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky ; 



Selected Poems 127 

I've thought of all by turns, and yet do lie 
Sleepless ; and soon the small birds' melodies 1025 
Must hear, first utter'd from my orchard trees, 
And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry. 

Even thus last night, and two nights more I lay, 
And could not win thee, Sleep ! by any stealth : 
So do not let me wear to-night away : 1030 

Without Thee what is all the morning's wealth? 
Come, blessed barrier between day and day, 
Dear mother of fresh thoughts and joyous health ! 

XXXIII 

The In'ner Vision 

Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes 

To pace the ground, if path be there or none, 1035 

While a fair region round the traveller lies 

Which he forbears again to look upon ; 

Pleased rather with some soft ideal scene. 

The work of Fancy, or some happy tone 

Of meditation, slipping in between 1040 

The beauty coming and the beauty gone. 

— If Thought and Love desert us, from that day 
Let us break off all commerce with the Muse : 
With Thought and Love companions of our way — 

Whate'er the senses take or may refuse, — 1045 

The Mind's internal heaven shall shed her dews 
Of inspiration on the humblest lay. 



128 William Wordsworth 

XXXIV 

Written in Early Spring 

I heard a thousand blended notes 

While in a grove I sate reclined, 

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts 1050 

Bring sad thoughts to the mind. 

To her fair works did Nature link 

The human soul that through me ran ; 

And much it grieved my heart to think 

What Man has made of Man. 1055 

Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower, 
The periwinkle trail'd its wreaths ; 
And 'tis my faith that every flower 
Enjoys the air it breathes. 

The birds around me hopp'd and play'd, 1060 

Their thoughts I cannot measure, — 
But the least motion which they made 
It seem'd a thrill of pleasure. 

* The budding twigs spread out their fan 
To catch the breezy air ; 1065 

And I must think, do all I can, 
That there was pleasure there. 

If this belief from heaven be sent, 

If such be Nature's holy plan. 

Have I not reason to lament 1070 

What Man has made of Man ? 



Selected Poems 129 

XXXV 

Ruth : or the Influences of Nature 

When Ruth was left half desolate 

Her father took another mate ; 

And Ruth, not seven years old, 

A slighted child, at her own will 1075 

Went wandering over dale and hill, 

In thoughtless freedom, bold. 

And she had made a pipe of straw, 

And music from that pipe could draw 

Like sounds of winds and floods ; 1080 

Had built a bower upon the green, 

As if she from her birth had been 

An infant of the woods. 

Beneath her father's roof, alone 

She seem'd to live ; her thoughts her own ; 1085 

Herself her own delight : 

Pleased with herself, nor sad nor gay ; 

And passing thus the live-long day, 

She grew to woman's height. 

There came a youth from Georgia's shore — 1090 
A military casque ^ he wore 
With splendid feathers drest ; 
He brought them from the Cherokees ; 
The feathers nodded in the breeze 
And made a gallant crest. 1095 

1 Helmet. 

SELECTIONS — 9 



ijo William Wordsworth 

From Indian blood you deem him sprung : 

But no ! he spake the English tongue 

And bore a soldier's name ; 

And, when America was free 

From battle and from jeopardy, noo 

He 'cross the ocean came. 

With hues of genius on his cheek, 

In finest tones the youth could speak : 

— While he was yet a boy 

The moon, the glory of the sun, 1105 

And streams that murmur as they run 

Had been his dearest joy. 

He was a lovely youth ! I guess 

The panther in the wilderness 

Was not so fair as he ; mo 

And when he chose to sport and play. 

No dolphin ever was so gay 

Upon the tropic sea. 

Among the Indians he had fought ; 

And with him many tal^s he brought 1115 

Of pleasure and of fear ; 

Such tales as, told to any maid 

By such a youth, in the green shade, 

Were perilous to hear. 

He told of girls, a happy rout 1 1120 

Who quit their fold with dance and shout. 
Their pleasant Indian town. 



Selected Poems 131 

To gather strawberries all day long ; 

Returning with a choral song 

When daylight is gone down. 1125 

He spake of plants that hourly change 

Their blossoms, through a boundless range 

Of intermingling hues ; 

With budding, fading, faded flowers, 

They stand the wonder of the bowers 1130 

From morn to evening dews. 

He told of the magnolia, spread 

High as a cloud, high over head ! 

The cypress and her spire ; 

— Of flowers that with one scarlet gleam 1135 

Cover a hundred leagues, and seem 

To set the hills on fire. 

The youth of green savannahs spake, 

And many an endless, endless lake 

With all its fairy crowds 1140 

Of islands, that together lie 

As quietly as spots of sky 

Among the evening clouds. 

' How pleasant,' then he said, * it were 

A fisher or a hunter there, 1145 

In sunshine or in shade 

To wander with an easy mind. 

And build a household fire, and find 

A home in every glade ! 



132 William Wordsworth 

' What days and what bright years ! Ah me ! 

Our Hfe were life indeed, with thee 1151 

So pass'd in quiet bhss ; 

And all the while,' said he, * to know 

That we were in a world of woe, 

On such an earth as this ! ' 1155 

And then he sometimes interwove 

Fond thoughts about a father's love, 

' For there,' said he, * are spun 

Around the heart such tender ties. 

That our own children to our eyes 1160 

Are dearer than the sun. 

' Sweet Ruth ! and could you go with me 

My helpmate in the woods to be, 

Our shed at night to rear ; 

Or run, my own adopted bride, 1165 

A sylvan huntress at my side. 

And drive the flying deer ! 

* Beloved Ruth ! ' — No more he said. 

The wakeful Ruth at midnight shed 

A solitary tear : 1170 

She thought again — and did agree 

With him to sail across the sea, 

And drive the flying deer. 

' And now, as fitting is and right. 

We in the church our faith will plight, 1175 

A husband and a wife. ' 



Selected Poems 133 

Even so they did ; and I may say 
That to sweet Ruth that happy day 
Was more than human life. 

Through dream and vision did she sink, 1180 

Delighted all the while to think 

That, on those lonesome floods 

And green savannahs, she should share 

His board wdth lawful joy, and bear 

His name in the wild woods. 1185 

But, as you have before been told, 

This Stripling, sportive, gay, and bold, 

And with his dancing crest 

So beautiful, through savage lands 

Had roam'd about, with vagrant bands 1190 

Of Indians in the West. 

The wind, the tempest roaring high, 

The tumult of a tropic sky 

Might well be dangerous food 

For him, a youth to whom was given 1195 

So much of earth — so much of heaven, 

And such impetuous blood. 

Whatever in those climes he found 

Irregular in sight or sound 

Did to his mind impart 1200 

A kindred impulse, seem'd allied 

To his own powers, and justified 

The workings of his heart. 



134 William Wordsworth 

Nor less, to feed voluptuous thought, 

The beauteous forms of Nature wrought, — 1205 

Fair trees and gorgeous flowers ; 

The breezes their own languor lent ; 

The stars had feelings, which they sent 

Into those favour'd bowers. 

Yet, in his worst pursuits, I ween 1210 

That sometimes there did intervene 

Pure hopes of high intent : 

For passions link'd to forms so fair 

And stately, needs must have their share 

Of noble sentiment. 1215 

But ill he lived, much evil saw, 

With men to whom no better law 

Nor better life was known ; 

Deliberately and undeceived 

Those wild men's vices he received, 1220 

And gave them back his own. 

His genius and his moral frame 

Were thus impair'd, and he became 

The slave of low desires : 

A man who without self-control 1225 ' 

Would seek what the degraded soul 

Unworthily admires. 

And yet he with no feign'd delight 

Had woo'd the maiden, day and night 

Had loved her, night and morn : 1230 



Selected Poems 135 

What could he less than love, a maid 
Whose heart with so much nature play'd — 
So kind and so forlorn ? 

Sometimes most earnestly he said, 

' O Ruth ! I have been worse than dead ; 1235 

False thoughts, thoughts bold and vain 

Encompass'd me on every side 

When I, in confidence and pride, 

Had cross'd the Atlantic main. 

* Before me shone a glorious world 1240 

Fresh as a banner bright, unfurl'd 

To music suddenly : 

I look'd upon those hills and plains, 

And seem'd as if let loose from chains 

To live at liberty ! 1245 

' No more of this — for now, by thee, 

Dear Ruth 1 more happily set free, 

With nobler zeal I burn ; 

My soul from darkness is released 

Like the whole sky when to the east 1250 

The morning doth return.' 

Full soon that better mind was gone ; 

No hope, no wish remain'd, not one, — 

They stirr'd him now no more ; 

New objects did new pleasure give, 1255 

And once again he wish'd to live 

As lawless as before. 



136 William Wordsworth 

Meanwhile, as thus with him it fared, 

They for the voyage were prepared. 

And went to the sea-shore : 1260 

But, when they thither came, the youth 

Deserted his poor bride, and Ruth 

Could never find him more. 

God help thee, Ruth ! — Such pains she had 

That she in half a year was mad 1265 

And in a prison housed ; 

And there, with many a doleful song 

Made of wild words, her cup of wrong 

She fearfully caroused. 

Yet sometimes milder hours she knew, 1270 

Nor wanted sun, nor rain, nor dew, 

Nor pastimes of the May, 

— They all were with her in her cell ; 

And a clear brook with cheerful knell 

Did o'er the pebbles play. 1275 

When Ruth three seasons thus had lain. 

There came a respite to her pain ; 

She from her prison fled ; 

But of the Vagrant none took thought ; 

And where it liked her best she sought 1280 

Her shelter and her bread. 

Among the fields she breathed again : 
The master-current of her brain 
Ran permanent and free ; 



Selected Poems 137 

And, coming to the banks of Tone, 12S5 

There did she rest ; and dwell alone 
Under the greenwood tree. 

The engines of her pain, the tools 

That shaped her sorrow, rocks and pools, 

And airs that gently stir 1290 

The vernal leaves — she loved them still, 

Nor ever tax'd them with the ill 

Which had been done to her. 

A barn her Winter bed supplies ; 

But, till the warmth of Summer skies 1295 

And Summer days is gone, 

(And all do in this tale agree) 

She sleeps beneath the greenwood tree, 

And other home has none. 

An innocent life, yet far astray ! • 1300 

And Ruth will, long before her day, 

Be broken down and old. 

Sore aches she needs must have ! but less 

Of mind, than body's wretchedness, 

From damp, and rain, and cold. 1305 

If she is prest by want of food 

She from her dwelling in the wood 

Repairs to a road-side ; 

And there she begs at one steep place, 

Where up and down with easy pace 1310 

The horsemen-travellers ride. 



138 William Wordsworth 

That oaten pipe of hers is mute 

Or thrown away : but with a flute 

Her loneliness she cheers ; 

This flute, made of a hemlock stalk, 1315 

At evening in his homeward walk 

The Quantock woodman hears. 

I, too, have pass'd her on the hills 

Setting her little water-mills 

By spouts and fountains \vild — 1320 

Such small machinery as she turn'd 

Ere she had wept, ere she had mourn'd, — 

A young and happy child ! 

Farewell ! and when thy days are told, 
Ill-fated Ruth ! in hallow'd mould 1325 

Thy corpse shall buried be ; 
For thee a funeral bell shall ring, 
. And all the congregation sing 
A Christian psalm for thee. 

XXXVI 

Nature and the Poet 

Suggested by a Pictiwe of Peek Castle in a Storm ^ painted 
by Sir George BeaumoJit 

I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile ! 1330 
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of thee : 
I saw thee every day ; and all the while 
Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea. 



Selected Poems 139 

So pure the sky, so quiet was the air ! 

So Hke, so very like, was day to day ! 1335 

Whene'er I look'd, thy image still was there ; 

It trembled, but it never pass'd away. 

How perfect was the calm ! It seem'd no sleep, 
No mood, which season takes away, or brings : 
I could have fancied that the mighty Deep 1340 

Was even the gentlest of all gentle things. 

Ah ! then — if mine had been the painter's hand 
To express what then I saw ; and add the gleam, 
The light that never was on sea or land. 
The consecration, and the Poet's dream, — 1345 

I would have planted thee, thou hoary pile, 
Amid a world how different from this ! 
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile ; 
On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss. 

Thou shouldst have seem'd a treasure-house divine 
Of peaceful years ; a chronicle of heaven ; — 1351 
Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine 
The very sweetest had to thee been given. 

A picture had it been of lasting ease, 

Elysian quiet, without toil or strife ; 1355 

No motion but the moving tide ; a breeze ; 

Or merely silent Nature's breathing life. 

Such, in the fond illusion of my heart. 

Such picture would I at that time have made ; 



140 William Wordsworth 

And seen the soul of truth in every part, 1360 

A steadfast peace that might not be betray'd. 

So once it would have been, — 'tis so no more ; 

I have submitted to a new control : 

A power is gone, which nothing can restore; 

A deep distress hath humanized my soul. 1365 

Not for a moment could I now behold 
A smiling sea, and be what I have been : 
The feeling of my loss will ne'er be old ; 
This, which I know, I speak with mind serene. 

Then, Beaumont, Friend ! who would have been the 
friend 1370 

If he had lived, of Him whom I deplore, 
This work of thine I blame not, but commend ; 
This sea in anger, and that dismal shore. 

'tis a passionate work ! — yet wise and well. 

Well chosen is the spirit that is here ; 1375 

That hulk which labours in the deadly swell, 
This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear ! 

And this huge Castle, standing here sublime, 

1 love to see the look with which it braves, 

— Cased in the unfeeling armour of old time — 1380 
The lightning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves. 

— Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone, 
Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind ! ^ 

1 Mankind. 



Selected Poems 141 

Such happiness, wherever it be known, 

Is to be pitied ; for 'tis surely bHnd. 1385 

But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer, 
And frequent sights of what is to be borne ! 
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here : — 
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn. 

XXXVII 

Glen-Almain, the Narrow Glen 

In this still place, remote from men, 1390 

Sleeps Ossian, in the Narrow Glen ; 

In this still place, where murmurs on 

But one meek streamlet, only one : 

He sang of battles, and the breath 

Of stormy war, and violent death ; 1395 

And should, methinks, when all was past. 

Have rightfully been laid at last 

Where rocks were rudely heap'd, and rent 

As by a spirit turbulent ; 

Where sights were rough, and sounds were wild, 

And everything imreconciled ; 1401 

In some complaining, dim retreat. 

For fear and melancholy meet ; 

But this is calm ; there cannot be 

A more entire tranquillity. 1405 

Does then the Bard sleep here indeed ? 

Or is it but a groundless creed ? 

What matters it ? — I blame them not 

Whose fancy in this lonely spot 



142 William Wordsworth 

Was moved ; and in such way express'd 1410 

Their notion of its perfect rest. 

A convent, even a hermit's cell, 

Would break the silence of this Dell : 

It is not quiet, is not ease ; 

But something deeper far than these : 1415 

The separation that is here 

Is of the grave ; and of austere 

Yet happy feelings of the dead : 

And, therefore, was it rightly said 

That Ossian, last of all his race ! 1420 

Lies buried in this lonely place. 

XXXVIII 

The World is too much with us ; late and soon, 
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ; 
Little we see in Nature that is ours ; 
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! 1425 

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon, 
The winds that will be howling at all hours 
And are up-gather'd now like sleeping flowers. 
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune ; 

It moves us not. — Great God ! I'd rather be 1430 
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, — 
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea. 

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; 

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea ; 

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. 1435 



Selected Poems 143 

XXXIX 

Within King's College Chapel, Cambridge 

Tax not the royal Saint ^ with vain expense, 
With ill-match'-d aims the Architect who plann'd 
(Albeit labouring for a scanty band 
Of white-robed Scholars only) this immense 

And glorious work of fine intelligence ! 1440 

— Give all thou canst ; high Heaven rejects the lore 
Of nicely-calculated less or more : — 
So deem'd the man who fashion'd for the sense 

These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof 
Self-poised, and scoop'd into ten thousand cells 1445 
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells 

Lingering — and wandering on as loth to die ; 
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof 
That they were born for immortality. 

XL 

The Two April Mornings 

We walk'd along, while bright and red 1450 

Uprose the morning sun ; 

And Matthew stopp'd, he look'd, and said 

' The will of God be done ! ' 

1 Henry VL 



144 William Wordsworth 

A village schoolmaster was he, 

With hair of glittering grey ; 1455 

As blithe a man as you could see 

On a spring holiday. 

And on that morning, through the grass 

And by the steaming rills 

We travell'd merril}^ to pass 1460 

A day among the hills. 

* Our work,' said I, ' was well begun ; 
Then, from thy breast what thought, 
Beneath so beautiful a sun, 

So sad a sigh has brought ? ' 1465 

A second time did Matthew stop ; 
And fixing still his eye 
Upon the eastern mountain-top, 
To me he made reply : 

' Yon cloud with that long purple cleft 1470 

Brings fresh into my mind 

A day like this, which I have left 

Full thirty years behind. 

* And just above yon slope of corn 

Such colours, and no other, 1475 

Were in the sky that April morn, 
Of this the very brother. 

* With rod and line I sued the sport 
Which that sweet season gave, 



Selected Poems 145 

And to the church-yard come, stopp'd short 1480 
Beside my daughter's grave. 

' Nine summers had she scarcely seen, 

The pride of all the vale ; 

And then she sang, — she would have been 

A very nightingale. 1485 

' Six feet in earth my Emma lay ; 
And yet I loved her more — 
For so it seem'd, — than till that day 
I e'er had loved before. 

' And turning from her grave, I met, 1490 

Beside the churchyard yew, 

A blooming Girl, whose hair was wet 

With points of morning dew. 

' A basket on her head she bare ; 

Her brow was smooth and white : 1495 

To see a child so very fair, 

It was a pure delight ! 

' No fountain from its rocky cave 

E'er tripp'd with foot so free ; 

She seem'd as happy as a wave 1500 

That dances on the sea. 

' There came from me a sigh of pain 

Which I could ill confine ; 

I look'd at her, and look'd again : 

And did not wish her mine ! ' 1505 

SELECTIONS — lO 



146 William Wordsworth 

— Matthew is in his grave, yet now 
Methinks I see him stand 
As at that moment, with a bough 
Of wilding in his hand. 



XLI 

The Fountain 

A Conversation 

We talk'd with open heart, and tongue 1510 
Affectionate and true, 
A pair of friends, though I was young, 
And Matthew seventy-two. 

We lay beneath a spreading oak. 

Beside a mossy seat ; 1515 

And from the turf a fountain broke 

And gurgled at our feet. 

' Now, Matthew ! ' said I, ' let us match 
This water's pleasant tune 
With some old border-song, or catch ^ 1520 

That suits a summer's noon ; 

' Or of the church-clock and the chimes 

Sing here beneath the shade 

That half-mad thing of witty rhymes 

Which you last April made ! ' 1525 

1 A merry song. 



Selected Poems 147 

In silence Matthew lay, and eyed 
The spring beneath the tree ; 
And thus the dear old man replied, 
The grey-hair 'd man of glee : 

' No check, no stay, this Streamlet fears, 1530 
How merrily it goes ! 
'Twill murmur on a thousand years 
And flow as now it flows. 

' And here, on this delightful day, 

I cannot choose but think 1535 

How oft, a vigorous man, I lay 

Beside this fountain's brink. 

' My eyes are dim with childish tears, 

My heart is idly stirr'd. 

For the same sound is in my ears 1540 

Which in those days I heard. 

' Thus fares it still in our decay : 

And yet the wiser mind 

Mourns less for what Age takes away, 

Than what it leaves behind. 1545 

' The blackbird amid leafy trees. 
The lark above the hill, 
Let loose their carols when they please, 
Are quiet when they will. 

* With Nature never do they wage 1550 

A foohsh strife ; they see 



148 William Wordsworth 

A happy youth, and their old age 
Is beautiful and free : 

' But we are press 'd by heavy laws ; 

And often, glad no more, 1555 

We wear a face of joy, because 

We have been glad of yore. 

* If there be one who need bemoan 
His kindred laid in earth, 

The household hearts that were his own, — 
It is the man of mirth. 1561 

' My days, my friend, are almost gone. 

My life has been approved, 

And many love me ; but by none 

Am I enough beloved.' 1565 

* Now both himself and me he wrongs, 
The man who thus complains ! 

I live and sing my idle songs 
Upon these happy plains : 

'And Matthew, for thy children dead 1570 

I'll be a son to thee ! ' 

At this he grasp'd my hand and said, 

* Alas ! that cannot be.' 

— We rose up from the fountain-side ; 
And down the smooth descent 1575 

Of the green sheep-track did we glide ; 
And through the wood we went ; 



Selected Poems 149 

And ere we came to Leonard's rock 

He sang those witty rhymes 

About the crazy old church-clock, 1580 

And the bewilder'd chimes. 

XLII 

The Trosachs 

There's not a nook within this solemn Pass, 

But were an apt confessional for One 

Taught by his summer spent, his autumn gone, 

That Life is but a tale of morning grass 1585 

Wither'd at eve. From scenes of art which chase 
That thought away, turn, and with watchful eyes 
Feed it 'mid Nature's old felicities, 
Rocks, rivers, and smooth lakes more clear than glass 

Untouch 'd, unbreathed upon : — Thrice happy quest, 
If from a golden perch of aspen spray 1591 

(October's workmanship to rival May), 

The pensive warbler of the ruddy breast 

That moral sweeten by a heaven-taught lay, 

Lulling the year, with all its cares, to restl 1595 

XLIII 

My heart leaps up when I behold 

A rainbow in the sky : 
So was it when my life began. 
So is it now I am a man, 



150 William Wordsworth 

So be it when I shall grow old 1600 

Or let me die ! 
The Child is father of the Man : 
And I could wish my days to be 
Bound each to each by natural piety. 



XLIV 

Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recol- 
lections OF Early Childhood 

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, 
The earth, and every common sight 1606 

To me did seem 
Apparell'd in celestial light, 
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 
It is not now as it hath been of yore ; — 1610 

Turn wheresoe'er I may, 
By night or day. 
The things which I have seen I now can see no more. 

The rainbow comes and goes, 

And lovely is the rose ; 1615 

The moon doth with delight 
Look round her when the heavens are bare ; 

Waters on a starry night 

Are beautiful and fair ; 
The sunshine is a glorious birth ; 1620 

But yet I know, where'er I go, 
That there hath past away a glory from the earth. 



Selected Poems 151 

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song, 
And while the young lambs bound 

As to the tabor's sound, 1625 

To me alone there came a thought of grief : 
A timely utterance gave that thought relief. 

And I again am strong. 
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep ; — 
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong : 1630 

I hear the echoes through the mountains throng. 
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep, 
And all the earth is gay ; 
Land and sea 
Give themselves up to jollity, 1635 

And with the heart of May 
Doth every beast keep holiday ; — 
Thou child of joy 
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy 
Shepherd-boy ! 

Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call 1640 

Ye to each other make ; I see 
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee ; 
My heart is at your festival. 
My head hath its coronal,^ 
The fulness of your bliss, I feel — I feel it all. 1645 

Oh evil day ! If I were sullen 
While Earth herself is adorning 

This sweet May-morning ; 
And the children are culling 

1 Crown. 



152 



William Wordsworth 



On every side 1650 

In a thousand valleys far and wide, 
Fresh flowers ; while the sun shines warm 
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm : — 
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear ! 
— But there's a tree, of many, one, 1655 

A single field which I have look'd upon, 
Both of them speak of something that is gone : 
The pansy at my feet 
Doth the same tale repeat : 
Whither is fled the visionary gleam ? 1660 

Where is it now, the glory and the dream? 

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; 
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting 

And Cometh from afar ; 1665 

Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness. 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 

From God, who is our home : 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy! 1670 

Shades of the prison-house begin to close 

Upon the growing Boy, 
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 

He sees it in his joy ; 
The Youth, who daily farther from the east 1675 

Must travel, still is Nature's priest, 
And by the vision splendid 
Is on his way attended ; 



Selected Poems 153 

At length the Man perceives it die away, 

And fade into the light of common day. 1680 

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own ; 
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, 
And, even with something of a mother's mind 
And no unworthy aim, 
The homely nurse doth all she can 1685 

To make her foster-child, her inmate, Man, 

Forget the glories he hath known, 
And that imperial palace whence he came. 

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses, 

A six years' darling of a pigmy size ! 1690 

See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies. 

Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, 

With light upon him from his father's eyes ! 

See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, 

Some fragment from his dream of human life, 1695 

Shaped by himself with newly-learned art ; 

A wedding or a festival, 

A mourning or a funeral ; 

And this hath now his heart. 

And unto this he frames his song : 1700 

Then will he fit his tongue 
To dialogues of business, love, or strife ; 

But it will not be long 

Ere this be thrown aside, 

And with new joy and pride 1705 

The little actor cons another part; 



54 



William Wordsworth 



Filling from time to time his ' humorous stage ' 
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, 
That life brings with her in her equipage ; 

As if his whole vocation 1710 

Were endless imitation. 

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie 

Thy soul's immensity.; 
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep 
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind, 1715 

That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep, 
Haunted for ever by the eternal Mind, — 

Mighty Prophet ! Seer blest ! 

On whom those truths do rest 
Which we are toiling all our lives to find, 1720 

In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave ; 
Thou, over whom thy Immortality 
Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave, 
A Presence which is not to be put by ; 
Thou little child, yet glorious in the might 1725 

Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height. 
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke 
The years to bring the inevitable yoke. 
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife ? 
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight, 173° 
And custom lie upon thee with a weight 
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life ! 

O joy ! that in our embers 
Is something that doth live, 



Selected Poems 155 

That Nature yet remembers 1735 

What was so fugitive ! 
The thought of our past years in me doth breed 
Perpetual benediction : not indeed 
For that which is most worthy to be blest, 
Delight and liberty, the simple creed 1740 

Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest, 
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast : — 
— Not for these I raise 
The song of thanks and praise ; 
But for those obstinate questionings 1745 

Of sense and outward things. 
Fallings from us, vanishings ; 
Blank misgivings of a creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized. 
High instincts, before which our mortal nature 1750 

Did tremble like a guilty thing surprized : 
But for those first affections. 
Those shadowy recollections. 

Which, be they what they may, 
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day, 1755 

Are yet a master-light of all our seeing ; 

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
Of the eternal Silence : truths that wake. 

To perish never ; 1760 

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, 

Nor man nor boy 
Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 
Can utterly abolish or destroy 1 



156 William Wordsworth 

Hence, in a season of calm weather 1765 

Though inland far we be, 
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
Which brought us hither ; 
Can in a moment travel thither — 
And see the children sport upon the shore, 1770 

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 



Then, sing ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song ! 

And let the young lambs bound 

As to the tabor's sound ! 
We, in thought, will join your throng 1775 

Ye that pipe and ye that play, 

Ye that through your hearts to-day 

Feel the gladness of the May ! 
What though the radiance which was once so bright 
Be now for ever taken from my sight, 1780 

Though nothing can bring back the hour 
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower ; 

We will grieve not, rather find 

Strength in what remains behind ; 

In the primal sympathy 1785 

Which having been must ever be ; 

In the soothing thoughts that spring 

Out of human suffering ; 

In the faith that looks through death, " 
In years that bring the philosophic mind. 1790 

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, 
Forbode not any severing of our loves ! 



Selected Poems 157 

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might ; 

I only have relinquished one delight 

To live beneath your more habitual sway : 1795 

I love the brooks which down their channels fret 

Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they ; 

The innocent brightness of a new-born day 

Is lovely yet ; 
The clouds that gather round the setting sun 1800 

Do take a sober colouring from an eye 
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality; 
Another race hath been, and other palms are won. 
Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, 1805 

To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 
I. Life 

Byron, Shelley, and Keats, whose names are joined 
as often as any three in English letters, were — with 
all their differences — alike in one sad respect. You 
cannot read their biographies without feeling a pity and 
a wonder that such rare genius should be given to the 
world so briefly. Too soon, with all three, the shears 
of the blind Fury slit the thin-spun life. 

Of the truly great English poets, Byron and Shelley 
stand almost alone as men of high birth. Though not 
of the nobility, Percy Bysshe Shelley came of a family 
both rich and ancient. His father, Timothy Shelley 
(afterward Sir Timothy), had married the very beautiful 
Elizabeth Pilfold. Of their four daughters and two 
sons, the eldest was the poet, who was born August 4, 
1792, at Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex. He might 
have been a changeling ; for never before or since 
did such conventional, worldly people rear a child so 
unworldly and so ethereal. Lord Chesterfield, with no 
greater surprise, might have found himself father to 
Ariel. 

Shelley passed his boyhood at Field Place, where, 
his sister Hellen has told us, he " would frequently 
come into the nursery, and was full of a peculiar kind 

159 



i6o Percy Bysshe Shelley 

of pranks. One piece of mischief, for which he was 
rebuked, was running a stick through the ceihng of a 
low passage to find some new chamber, which could 
be made eiTective for some new flights of imagination." 
His sister has also left a picture of him as a slight and 
beautiful figure, with eyes of a ''wild fixed beauty," 
skin like snow, and bright ringlets covering his head ; 
and tells how, while playing at ghosts and alchemists, 
the children all dressed themselves " in strange costumes 
to personate spirits or fiends, and Bysshe would take 
a fire-stove and fill it with some inflammable liquid and 
carry it flaming into the kitchen and to the back door." 
The boy was also friends with an " Old Snake " who 
had lived for several generations in the garden. 

When ten years old, he was sent away to school, at 
Sion House, Brentford. Here, while dreaming out at the 
windows, or wandering in a revery, he absorbed the 
classic languages as if without an effort. On holidays, 
when the other boys went to their games, his slight 
and delicate figure might be seen pacing back and forth 
under the playground walls, in deep and vague medi- 
tation. In 1804 he left Sion House for Eton, where 
again he was not popular, though he won admiration 
from the younger boys, of his own age, by leading a 
rebellion against the custom of fagging. This last, you 
might guess, is exactly what Shelley would do ; for his 
whole life was a protest against all established customs 
which had any trace of oppression or tyranny. His 
schoolmates elected him "The Atheist," — a title 
which, his friend Hogg says, was given to the boy who 



Introduction i6i 

defied the rules most openly. In studies he was not 
idle, but irregular, reading Greek and Latin with 
astonishing swiftness, dabbling with crucibles, micro- 
scopes, and Leyden jars, and going about, even on 
holidays at home, with hands and clothes "constantly 
stained and corroded by acids." Science fascinated 
him, but he did not really study so much as play at it, 
like any boy who has read about magicians and 
alchemists. 

He also wrote a wild and foolish novel called 
Zastrozzi, which strangely enough got itself published 
in 1810, and which brought him in ^40. He spent 
the money, or part of it, on a farewell supper with 
eight other school-boys, and left Eton for Oxford. 
Hogg, his college friend and biographer, describes him 
as a freshman, and their Hfe as undergraduates. '' He 
was tall, but he stooped so much that he seemed of a 
low stature. His clothes were expensive, and made 
according to the most approved mode, . . . but they 
were tumbled, rumpled, unbrushed. His gestures were 
abrupt, and sometimes violent, . . . yet more fre- 
quently gentle and graceful. His complexion was 
. . . almost feminine, of the purest red and white. . . . 
His features . . . and particularly his head, were 
. . . unusually small ; yet the last appeared of a re- 
markable bulk, for his hair was long and bushy, and 
... in the agonies ... of anxious thought, he often 
rubbed it fiercely with his hands ... so that it was 
singularly wild and rough. ... His features . . . 
breathed an animation, a fire, an enthusiasm, a vivid 

SELECTIONS — IX 



1 62 Percy Bysshe Shelley 

and preternatural intelligence, that I never met with in 
any other countenance." His voice " was excruciat- 
ing; it was intolerably shrill, harsh, and discordant." 
Like Byron, Shelley was a good shot, and carried and 
fired pistols everywhere, so recklessly as to be a danger 
both to others and to himself. His rooms were a wild 
confusion of chemical and electrical apparatus, jumbled 
wath half-finished manuscripts, perilous acids, and 
costly books. He read, says Hogg, sixteen hours out 
of the twenty-four ; walked, ate, and talked with his 
friend ; and at six in the evening, " even in the midst 
of a most animated narrative," would stretch out on the 
rug, with his "little round head" fairly in the fire, and 
so lie, " in a sweet and mighty oblivion, until ten, when 
he would suddenly start up, and rubbing his eyes with 
great violence, and passing his fingers swiftly through 
his longhair, would . . . begin to recite verses, either 
... his own ... or from the works of others, with 
a rapidity and an energy that were often quite painful." 
Whatever this undergraduate career might have led to, 
it was cut short on March 25, 181 1. Always eager to 
speculate and argue on philosophy and religion, Shelley 
had published a two-page pamphlet called The Neces- 
sity of Atheism. Its spirit seems to have been callow 
rather than wicked ; but the Fellows of the college 
pounced upon it, and expelled its author. With Hogg 
— who stood by him and was also expelled — Shelley 
left Oxford, and took the ' coach for London. His 
father had forbidden him to return home, his supply of 
money was scant, and he was forced to give up all hope 



Introduction 163 

of marrying the cousin, Harriet Grove, to whom he had 
once been virtually engaged. 

With these prospects, Shelley took a characteristic 
step. We must be fair, by the way, to his father, who 
tried to be reconciled and proposed compromises. 
Shelley would not listen. For all compromise he had 
an inborn, fiery hatred. This is the single and lame 
excuse for the contempt with which he treated his 
father ; this, and the twist which genius gives a man, 
the fact that a young and unbounded imagination could 
not understand the ties of common life. At all events, 
with such a twist and with such prospects, Shelley now 
determined to marry. Harriet Westbrook, a pink and 
white girl of sixteen, listened to his doctrines of free 
thought, and persuaded him that she was ill-treated 
both at home and at school. The plea of tyranny was 
enough for the poet ; they eloped in a hackney coach 
that autumn, and were married in Edinburgh. Their 
married life is difficult to trace. It began happily in 
Scotland, continued through many rapid fhttings from 
house to house and city to city, and — after they had 
tried to stir up a revolution in Ireland, by throwing 
copies of an Address to the Irish People to men who 
passed beneath their balcony in Dublin — it ended by 
a separation in July, 1814. Meantime (18 13), Shelley 
had published Queen Mab, an immature poem which 
confirmed the public in thinking him a dangerous infidel. 
And when, a fortnight after separating from his wife, 
he departed for the Continent with Mary Godwin, he 
became, like Byron, a sort of English monster. 



164 Percy Bysshe Shelley 

Of his great lyric powers he had yet given no sign. 
It was only after his wanderings in France, Switzerland, 
and England, after the tragic death of his first wife 
Harriet and his marriage to Mary Godwin in 18 16, 
that he settled in Italy, and with the shadow of death 
over him, began those four wonderful years of song. 
The list of his important works is very short. To 
Queen Mat, Alastor, and to Laon and Cythna — pub- 
lished in 18 1 7, reissued next year as The Revolt of 
Islam — he now added, in 18 19, The Cenci, and in 
1820, Prometheus Unbound; in 1821, Epipsychidion 
and his lament for the death of Keats, Adonais ; and 
in 1822, Hellas. His best lyrics were written in this 
period, while he lived at Naples, Leghorn, or Pisa, 
a constant companion of Lord Byron, and like him, 
exiled as an enemy to society. He had friends and 
visitors, however, besides Byron, — his cousin Cap- 
tain Medwin, Mr. and Mrs. Williams, the Greek prince 
and revolutionist Mavrocordatos, Leigh Hunt, and the 
Cornish rover and free-lance, Captain Trelawny. 

It is Trelawny who has told us how Shelley passed 
his days. '' [He] was up at six or seven, reading Plato, 
Sophocles, or Spinoza, with the accompaniment of a 
hunch of dry bread ; then he joined Williams in a sail 
on the Arno, in a flat-bottomed skiff, book in hand, and 
from thence he went to the pine-forest, or some out-of- 
the-way place. When the birds went to roost, he re- 
turned home, and talked and read until midnight." 
Once Trelawny, after hunting for Shelley all day in 
the pine forest near Pisa, was guided by an old con- 



Introduction 165 

tadino to his retreat. "As we advanced, the ground 
swelled into mounds and hollows. By-and-by the old 
fellow pointed with his stick to a hat, books, and loose 
papers lying about, and then to a deep pool of dark 
glimmering water, saying ' Eccolo ! ' I thought he meant 
that Shelley was in or under the water. The careless, 
not to say impatient, way in which the Poet bore his 
burden of life, caused a vague dread amongst his family 
and friends that he might lose or cast it away at 
any moment. 

" The strong light streamed through the opening of 
the trees. One of the pines, undermined by the water, 
had fallen into it. Under its lea, and nearly hidden, 
sat the Poet, gazing on the dark mirror beneath, so lost 
in his bardish revery that he did not hear my approach. 
There the trees were stunted and bent, and their 
crowns were shorn like friars by the sea breezes, ex- 
cepting a cluster of three, under which Shelley's traps 
w^ere lying ; these overtopped the rest. To avoid star- 
tling the Poet out of his dream, I squatted under the 
lofty trees, and opened his books. One was a volume 
of his favourite Greek dramatist, Sophocles — the same 
that I found in his pocket after death — and the 
other was a volume of Shakespeare." The dreamer had 
been writing the lyric Ariel to Miranda : — Take, etc. " It 
was a frightful scrawl ; words smeared out with his 
finger, and one upon the other, over and over in tiers 
and all run together ' in most admired disorder ' ; it 
might have been taken for a sketch of a marsh over- 
grown with bulrushes, and the blots for wild ducks. 



1 66 Percy Bysshe Shelley 

. . . On my observing this to him, he answered, 
' When my brain gets heated with thought, it soon 
boils, and throws off images and words faster than I 
can skim them off.' " 

In these last days of wonderful activity, his fate ap- 
pears to gather thickly over Shelley, as over Shake- 
speare's Brutus. Both he and his friends talked much of 
death, saw visions, felt premonitions. Twice it seemed 
to the poet that Allegra, Byron's dead child, rose 
laughing from the sea to beckon him. At midnight the 
vision of a cloaked figure stood at his bedside, sum- 
moned him to follow to another room, and there, un- 
shrouding its cloak, revealed to the terrified beholder 
his own features. Among such visions he continued 
to write his last poem. The Triumph of Life. The frag- 
ment remains broken at the words : " Then what is 
Life? I cried — " 

He was soon to find the answer. On July 8, 1822, 
he and Edward Williams, with a sailor boy named 
Charles Vivian, set sail from Leghorn for Lerici, in 
their yacht, the Don jHa7i. Captain Trelavvny, aboard 
Byron's Bolivar in the harbour, watching them start, 
heard his Genoese mate grumble — " the devil is brew- 
ing mischief." The departing sail was lost in a fog. A 
short but violent storm broke soon after. For ten days 
Trelawny patrolled with the coast-guardsmen, before 
Shelley's body was found on the sand near Via Reggio. 
In one pocket was " the volume of Sophocles . . . and 
Keats's poems in the other, doubled back, as if the 
reader, in the act of reading, had hastily thrust it away." 



Introduction 167 

Only the poet's ashes could be taken to Rome 
for burial. A funeral pyre was therefore necessary. 
Captain Trelawny, eye-witness to many strange happen- 
ings, saw none stranger than the last rites. " Byron 
and Leigh Hunt arrived in the carriage, attended by 
soldiers, and the Health Officer. . . . The lonely and 
grand scenery that surrounded us, so exactly harmon- 
ized with Shelley's genius, that I could imagine his 
spirit soaring over us. The sea, with the islands of 
Gorgona, Capraja, and Elba, was before us ; old battle- 
mented watch-towers stretched along the coast, backed 
by the marble-crested Apennines glistening in the sun. 
. . . The work went on silently . . . not a word was 
spoken, for the Italians have a touch of sentiment, and 
their feelings are easily excited into sympathy. Byron 
was silent and thoughtful. . . . After the fire was well 
kindled . . . more wine was poured over Shelley's dead 
body than he had consumed during his life. This with 
the oil and salt made the yellow flames glisten and 
quiver. The heat from the sun and fire was so intense 
that the atmosphere was tremulous and wa\y. .• . . 
The fire was so fierce as to produce a white heat on 
the iron, and to reduce its contents to grey ashes. . . . 
but what surprised us" all was that the heart remained 
entire. In snatching this relic from the fiery furnace, 
my hand was severely burnt." 

Shelley's heart was carried to England ; his ashes 
were taken to Rome, where they lie in the Protestant 
cemetery, near his son William and his friend Keats. 
Leigh Hunt wrote the epitaph: — 



1 68 Percy Bysshe Shelley 

"PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 

COR CORDIUM 

Natus iv. Aug. MDCCXCH. 

Obiit viii. Jul. MDCCCXXH." 

To this Trelawny added the lines sung by another 

Ariel in another Tempest : — 

" Nothing of him that doth fade, 
But doth suffer a sea-change 
Into something rich and strange." 

II. Poems 

If you had lived a hundred years ago, you would 
probably have heard of Shelley's poems as the work of 
a dangerous and wicked young man who proclaimed 
theories destructive to the church, the state, and the 
home. If, however, you were to read of those poems 
only the selections in the present book, you would be 
left wondering how their author could possibly have 
earned so bad a name. You will find, in reading them, 
nothing violent or incendiary, no signs of the "" Neces- 
sity of Atheism," no fiery impatience for the millennium, 
no ardent and eloquent struggle — 

"... to repeal 
Large codes of fraud and woe." 

Indeed, you will not find Shelley speaking as a revolu- 
tionist at all, except in the Lines Written aiJiong the 
Euganean Hills, where he prophesied the downfall of 
Venice, with her — 

"... conquest-branded brow 
Stooping to the slave of slaves." 



Introduction 169 

Except for this hint, and one or two even less direct, 
you might not guess that the clear spirit of this singer 
was ever troubled by the rebellious doctrine of William 
Godwin. 

Indeed, there is no strong reason why you should 
learn to know Shelley as a revolutionary poet. Later 
some of you may read, perhaps, those other poems 
which, like The Revolt of Islam, Hellas, or Prometheus 
Unbound, show what violent sympathy he felt with 
revolutions both real and imagined, and with what high 
hopes he looked forward to a bloodless victory over 
the established order of his day, and to a new and 
early brotherhood of man. For the present, however, 
the few short pieces in this book will disclose to you 
all, or nearly all, the other great leading motives of 
the poet, the beauties of his verse, and the quality of 
his genius. 

A solitary man, and none other, must have written 
such lines as — 

"Alas! I have nor hope nor health, 

Nor peace within nor calm around ; . . . 
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure. 

Others I see whom these surround — 
Smiling they live, and call life pleasure; — 
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure." 

When he sits beside " the deep's untrampled floor, . . . 
upon the sands alone," he utters his most poignant 
thought in the exclamation — 

" How sweet ! did any heart now share in my emotion." 



lyo Percy Bysshe Shelley 

And to this brooding sense of loneliness is added the 
discontent of a young man who has a grievance against 
the world, who finds nothing " the world contains in 
which he could approve." Discontent and longing 
mingle with his moments of keenest joy. It is not 
that he misses any human companion, or longs for 
some absent person, like Wordsworth when he wrote — ■ 

" Surprised by joy, impatient as the Wind, 
I turned to share the transport — Oh ! with whom 
But Thee, deep buried in the silent tomb ;" 

for with Shelley, the beloved absent being is a vague 
Unknown. When he brings his tribute of " visionary 
flowers," it is to no one on earth : — 

"... elate and gay, 
I hastened to the spot whence I had come, 
That I might there present it — ^oh ! to whom? " 

The question remains unanswered. But it is the ques- 
tion, plainly, of an idealist. When you are older, you 
will find that this Unknown was the ideal of Intel- 
lectual Beauty, which Shelley pursued through all his 
short life and his long art. 

Beauty, to Wordsworth, lay all about and close at 
hand in the meanest objects of common life, when those 
objects were seized upon and contemplated in the light 
of the poet's emotion. To Shelley (though perhaps he 
learned some part of that truth from the Cumbrian poet) 
beauty lay at the end of a quest, in some region as far 
off as the No Man's Land to which Alastor travelled. 
This being so, you will understand why Shelley, who 



Introduction 171 

could and sometimes did describe outdoor things in 
terms concrete and vivid, brings before your inward eye 
fewer actual scenes of natural beauty than his compan- 
ion poets. His Italian landscapes are likely to be real 
landscapes ; but England does not produce such vales of 
" musk-rose twined with jasmine," such stormy crags or 
" ghastly torrents " or primeval cedars, as Shelley used 
for background ; and even in Italy he sees less beauty of 
earth than of light and air. The humbler living things 
are absent : no green linnet flits among its brother 
leaves, no poor Wat, the hare, doubles through the thick- 
ets of Shelley's wood ; so that when, in the fourth stanza 
of The Recollectio7i, you hear the woodpecker disturbing 
the silence of the trees, you greet with surprise a sound 
so unexpectedly familiar. The Hving creatures in Shel- 
ley are almost always birds ; and those birds, whether 
the grey shades of Euganean rooks soaring in dewy mists, 
or the skylark lost '' in the golden lightning of the sunken 
sun," are tiny points of animate hfe, high above him, 
nearly disembodied and dissolved in light and space. 

Light and space, indeed, are Shelley's own domain. 
For this dreamy, isolated spirit, so quick and volatile 
that he has often been hkened to Ariel, no grosser 
elements would serve than air and water. Shelley is 
not a narrative poet, for the reason that no story could 
find a foothold in his airy medium. Events, even the 
greatest events, he recounts as happening at a vast dis- 
tance, and, as it were, in the sky. Were he to sing the 
battle of the giants and the gods, it would become a 
colossal but invisible warfare somewhere at the back of 



172 Percy Bysshe Shelley 

the rainbow or the sunset. On the other hand, the 
fascination which ethereal heights and Hghts exerted 
on him is the source of his most beautiful and magical 
effects. Where has aspiration been given greater 
depth and distance than in his line " The desire of the 
moth for the star " ? And as for the description of 
sights in Nature, no poet has left more lasting pictures 
of lights, calm or stormy, seen in the heavens, in pools, 
or upon the sea. His waves are — 

" Light dissolved in star-showers thrown." 

In the woods he invites us — 

" To the pools where winter rains 
Image all their roof of leaves" — 

or to where — 

" Sweet views which in our world above 
Can never well be seen, 
Were imaged in the water's love 
Of that fair forest green; 
And all was interfused beneath 
With an Elysian glow, 
An atmosphere without a breath, 
A softer day below. 
Like one beloved, the scene had lent 
To the dark water's breast 
Its every leaf and lineament 
With more than truth exprest." 

Before a tempest, he makes us see — 

" Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 
Of some fierce Maenad, ev'n from the dim verge 
Of the horizon to the Zenith's height • — 
The locks of the approaching storm." 



Introduction 173 

And to that wonderful catalogue of flowers — which in 
a less subtle poet had been still life — Shelley gives an 
unearthly, tremulous beauty, as with his — 

"... floating water-lilies, broad and bright, 
Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge 
With moonlight beams of their own watery light." 

Blossoms, indeed, he often thus describes as luminous, 
like those of "the moonlight-coloured May." His sky- 
lark, which soars and sings forever in English poetry, 
is likened to a cloud of fire, to a star dissolved in the 
broad daylight, to a glow-worm shining in dew^y grass, 
and to the bright drops from rainbow clouds. He 
changes all objects into something rich and strange, not 
of the sea, but of the sky ; and so radiant is the sky, in 
his best and highest moments, that like his lark he 
becomes — 

"... a poet hidden 
In the light of thought." 

III. Bibliographical Note 

Texts. — Poetical JVorks, ed. E. Dowden, Globe edition; 
Poetical IVorks, ed. G. E. Woodberr}', Cambridge edition; 
Selections, in Golden Treasury Series. 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by J. A. Symonds (Eng- 
lish Men of Letters) ; Life, by W. Sharp (Great Writers) ; Life, 
by E. Dowden (Kegan Paul). Essays, by Matthew Arnold 
(Essays in Criticism) ; by Walter Bagehot {Literary 
Studies') ; by R. H. Hutton {Literary Essays, and Essays 
Theological and Literary) ; by G. E. Woodberry {Makers 
of Literature) ; by D. Masson {Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, 
and Other Essays). 



SELECTIONS FROM SHELLEY 

PAGE 

The Indian Serenade 175 

i fear thy kisses, gentle maiden 1 76 

Love's Philosophy 176 

To THE Night 177 

The Flight of Love 178 

One word is too often profaned 179 

Stanzas Written in Dejection near Naples . . .180 

To A Skylark . . . 181 

OZYMANDIAS OF EgYPT 1 86 

To A Lady, with a Guitar i86 

The Invitation 189 

The Recollection 191 

To THE Moon 195 

A Dream of the Unknown 195 

Written among the Euganean Hills .... 197 

Ode to the West Wind 203 

The Poet's Dream 206 

A Dirge 207 

Threnos 207 

Music, when soft voices die 207 



174 



SELECTIONS FROM SHELLEY 



The Indian Serenade 

I ARISE from dreams of Thee 

In the first sweet sleep of night, 

When the winds are breathing low 

And the stars are shining bright : 

I arise from dreams of thee, 5 

And a spirit in my feet 

Hath led me — who knows how ? 

To thy chamber-window, Sweet I 

The wandering airs they faint 

On the dark, the silent stream — 10 

The champak odours fail 

Like sweet thoughts in a dream ; 

The nightingale's complaint 

It dies upon her heart, 

As I must die on thine 15 

beloved as thou art ! 

Oh lift me from the grass ! 

1 die, I faint, I fail ! 

Let thy love in kisses rain 
On my lips and eyelids pale. 20 

175 



176 Percy Bysshe Shelley 

My cheek is cold and white, alas ! 
My heart beats loud and fast ; 
Oh ! press it close to thine again 
Where it will break at last. 

II 

I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden ; 25 

Thou needest not fear mine ; 
My spirit is too deeply laden 
Ever to burthen thine. 

I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion ; 
Thou needest not fear mine ; 3c 

Innocent is the heart's devotion 
With which I worship thine. 

Ill 

Love's Philosophy 

The fountains mingle with the river 

And the rivers with the ocean, 

The winds of heaven mix for ever 35 

With a sweet emotion ; 

Nothing in the world is single. 

All things by a law divine 

In one another's being mingle — 

Why not I with thine ? 40 

See the mountains kiss high heaven, 
And the waves clasp one another ; 
No sister-flower would be forgiven 
If it disdain 'd its brother : 



Selected Poems 177 

And the sunlight clasps the earth, 45 

And the moonbeams kiss the sea — 
What are all these kissings worth, 
If thou kiss not me ? 

IV 

To The Night 

Swiftly walk over the western wave, 

Spirit of Night ! 50 

Out of the misty eastern cave 
Where, all the long and lone daylight, 
Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear 
Which make thee terrible and dear, — 

Swift be thy flight ! 55 

Wrap thy form in a mantle grey 

Star-inwrought ; 
Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day, 
Kiss her until she be wearied out : 
Then wander o'er city and sea and land, 60 

Touching all with thine opiate wand — 

Come, long-sought ! 

When I arose and saw the dawn, 

.1 sigh'd for thee ; 
When light rode high, and the dew was gone, 65 
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree. 
And the weary Day turn'd to his rest 
Lingering like an unloved guest, 
T sigh'd for thee. 

SELECTIONS — 12 



lyS Percy Bysshe Shelley 

Thy brother Death came, and cried 70 

Wouldst thou me ? 

Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, 

Murmur'd hke a noon-tide bee 

Shall I nestle near thy side ? 

Wouldst thou me? — And I replied 75 

No, not thee ! 

Death will come when thou art dead. 

Soon, too soon — 
Sleep will come when thou art fled ; 
Of neither would I ask the boon 80 

I ask of thee, beloved Night — 
Swift be thine approaching flight, 
Come soon, soon ! 



The Flight of Love 

When the lamp is shatter'd 

The light in the dust lies dead — 85 

When the cloud is scatter 'd, 

The rainbow's glory is shed. 

When the lute is broken, 

Sweet tones are remember'd not ; 

When the lips have spoken, 90 

Loved accents are soon forgot. 

As music and splendour 

Survive not the lamp and the lute. 



Selected Poems 179 

The heart's echoes render 

No song when the spirit is mute — 95 

No song but sad dirges, 

Like the wind through a ruin'd cell, 

Or the mournful surges 

That ring the dead seaman's knell. 

When hearts have once mingled, 100 

Love first leaves the well-built nest ; 

The weak one is singled 

To endure what it once possesst. 

O Love ! who bewailest 

The frailty of all things here, 105 

Why choose you the frailest 

For your cradle, your home, and your bier? 

Its passions will rock thee 

As the storms rock the ravens on high ; 

Bright reason will mock thee no 

Like the sun from a wintry sky. 

From thy nest every rafter 

Will rot, and thine eagle home 

Leave thee naked to laughter, 

When leaves fall and cold winds come. 115 

VI 

One word is too often profaned 

For me to profane it. 
One feeling too falsely disdain'd 

For thee to disdain it. 



i8o Percy Bysshe Shelley 

One hope is too like despair 120 

For prudence to smother, 
And pity from thee more dear 

Than that from another. 

I can give not what men call love ; 

But wilt thou accept not 125 

The worship the heart lifts above 

And the Heavens reject not : 
The desire of the moth for the star, 

Of the night for the morrow, 
The devotion to something afar 130 

From the sphere of our sorrow ? 

VII 

Stanzas Written in Dejection near Naples 

The sun is warm, the sky is clear, 
The waves are dancing fast and bright, 
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear 
The purple noon's transparent might : 135 

The breath of the moist earth is light 
Around its unexpanded buds ; 
Like many a voice of one delight — 
The winds', the birds', the ocean-floods' — 
The city's voice itself is soft like Solitude's. 140 

I see the deep's untrampled floor 

With green and purple sea-weeds strown ; 

I see the waves upon the shore 

Like light dissolved in star-showers thrown : 



Selected Poems i8i 

I sit upon the sands alone ; 145 

The lightning of the noon-tide ocean 
Is flashing round me, and a tone 
Arises from its measured motion — 
How sweet ! did any heart now share in my emotion. 

Alas ! I have nor hope nor health, 150 

Nor peace within nor calm around. 
Nor that content, surpassing wealth. 
The sage in meditation found, 
And walk'd with inward glory crown'd — 
Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure ; 155 

Others I see whom these surround — 
Smiling they live, and call hfe pleasure ; 
To me that cup has been dealt in another measure. 

Yet now despair itself is mild 

Even as the winds and waters are ; 160 

I could lie down like a tired child, 
And weep away the life of care 
Which I have borne, and yet must bear, — 
Till death like sleep might steal on me, 
And I might feel in the warm air 165 

My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea 
Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony. 

VIII 

To A Skylark 

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit ! 

Bird thou never wert, 
That from heaven, or near it 170 



1 82 Percy Bysshe Shelley 

Pourest thy full heart 
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. 

Higher still and higher 

From the earth thou springest, 
Like a cloud of fire, 175 

The blue deep thou wingest, 
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest. 

In the golden lightning 

Of the sunken sun 
O'er which clouds are brightening, 180 

Thou dost float and run. 
Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun. 

The pale purple even 

Melts around thy flight ; 
Like a star of heaven 185 

In the broad daylight 
Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight : 

Keen as are the arrows 

Of that silver sphere. 
Whose intense lamp narrows 190 

In the white dawn clear 
Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there. 

All the earth and air 

With thy voice is loud, 
As, when night is bare, 195 

From one lonely cloud 
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is over- 
flow 'd. 



Selected Poems 183 

What thou art we know not ; 

What is most like thee ? 
From rainbow clouds there flow not 200 

Drops so bright to see 
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody ; — 

Like a poet hidden 

In the light of thought, 
Singing hymns unbidden, 205 

Till the world is wrought 
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not : 

Like a high-born maiden 

In a palace tower, 
Soothing her love-laden 210 

Soul in secret hour 
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower : 

Like a glow-worm golden 

In a dell of dew, 
Scattering unbeholden ^ 215 

Its aerial hue 
Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the 
view ; 

Like a rose embower'd 

In its own green leaves. 
By warm winds deflower'd, 220 

Till the scent it gives 
Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged 
thieves. 



184 Percy Bysshe Shelley 

Sound of vernal showers 
On the twinkling grass, 
Rain-awaken'd flowers, 225 

All that ever was 
Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. 

Teach us, sprite or bird, 

What sweet thoughts are thine : 
I have never heard 230 

Praise of love or wine 
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. 

Chorus hymeneal 

Or triumphal chaunt 
Match'd with thine, would be all 235 

But an empty vaunt — 
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 

What objects are the fountains 

Of thy happy strain ? 
What fields, or waves, or mountains ? 240 

What shapes of sky or plain ? 
What love of thine own kind ? what ignorance of 
pain? 

With thy clear keen joyance 

Languor cannot be : 
Shadow of annoyance «45 

Never came near thee : 
Thou lovest ; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety. 



Selected Poems 185 

Waking or asleep 

Thou of death must deem 
Things more true and deep 250 

Than we mortals dream, 
Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream ? 

We look before and after, 

And pine for what is not : 
Our sincerest laughter 255 

With some pain is fraught ; 
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest 
thought. 

Yet if we could scorn 

Hate, and pride, and fear ; 
If we were things born 260 

Not to shed a tear, 
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near. 

Better than all measures 

Of delightful sound, 
Better than all treasures 265 

That in books are found, 
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground ! 

Teach me half the gladness 

That thy brain must know, 
Such harmonious madness 270 

From my lips would flow, 
The world should listen then, as I am listening now ! 



1 86 Percy Bysshe Shelley 

IX 

OZYMANDIAS OF EgYPT 

I met a traveller from an antique land 
Who said : Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, 275 
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown 
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command 
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read 
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things. 
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed; 
And on the pedestal these words appear : 281 

' My name is Ozymandias, king of kings : 
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair ! ' 
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay 
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, 285 

The lone and level sands stretch far away. 



To A Lady, with a Guitar 

Ariel to Miranda : — Take 

This slave of music, for the sake 

Of him, who is the slave of thee ; 

And teach it all the harmony 290 

In which thou canst, and only thou. 

Make the delighted spirit glow. 

Till joy denies itself again 

And, too intense, is turn'd to pain. 



Selected Poems 187 

For by permission and command 295 

Of thine own Prince Ferdinand, 

Poor Ariel sends this silent token 

Of more than ever can be spoken ; 

Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who 

From life to life must still pursue 300 

Your happiness, for thus alone 

Can Ariel ever find his own, 

From Prospero's enchanted cell, 

As the mighty verses tell. 

To the throne of Naples he 305 

Lit you o'er the trackless sea, 

Flitting on, your prow before, 

Like a living meteor. 

When you die, the silent Moon 

In her interlunar swoon 310 

Is not sadder in her cell 

Than deserted Ariel : — 

When you live again on earth, 

Like an unseen Star of birth 

Ariel guides you o'er the sea 315 

Of life from your nativity : — 

Many changes have been run 

Since Ferdinand and you begun 

Your course of love, and Ariel still 

Has track'd your steps and served your will. 320 

Now in humbler, happier lot, 

This is all remember'd not ; 

And now, alas ! the poor Sprite is 

Imprison'd for^some fault of his 



1 88 Percy Bysshe Shelley 

In a body like a grave — 325 

From you he only dares to crave, 
For his service and his sorrow 
A smile to-day, a song to-morrow. 

The artist who this idol wrought 

To echo all harmonious thought, 330 

Fell'd a tree, while on the steep 

The woods were in their winter sleep, 

Rock'd in that repose divine 

On the wind-swept Apennine ; 

And dreaming, some of Autumn past, 335 

And some of Spring approaching fast, 

And some of April buds and showers. 

And some of songs in July bowers, 

And all of love : And so this tree, — 

Oh that such our death may be ! — 340 

Died in sleep, and felt no pain. 

To live in happier form again : 

From which, beneath heaven's fairest star, 

The artist wrought this loved Guitar ; 

And taught it justly to reply 345 

To all who question skilfully 

In language gentle as thine own ; 

Whispering in enamour'd tone 

Sweet oracles of woods and dells, 

And summer winds in sylvan cells : 35c 

— For it had learnt all harmonies 

Of the plains and of the skies. 

Of the forests and the mountains. 



Selected Poems 189 

And the many-voiced fountains ; 

The clearest echoes of the hills, 355 

The softest notes of falling rills, 

The melodies of birds and bees, 

The murmuring of summer seas, 

And pattering rain, and breathing dew, 

And airs of evening ; and it knew 360 

That seldom-heard mysterious sound 

Which, driven on its diurnal round. 

As it floats through boundless day, 

Our world enkindles on its way : 

— All this it knows, but will not tell 365 

To those who cannot question well 

The Spirit that inhabits it ; 

It talks according to the wit 

Of its companions ; and no more 

Is heard than has been felt before 370 

By those who tempt it to betray 

These secrets of an elder day. 

But, sweetly as its answers will 

Flatter hands of perfect skill, 

It keeps its highest holiest tone 375 

For our beloved Friend alone. 



XI 

The Invitation 

Best and brightest, come away 
Fairer far than this fair Day, 



190 Percy Bysshe Shelley 

Which, like thee, to those in sorrow 

Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow 380 

To the rough year just awake 

In its cradle on the brake. 

The brightest hour of unborn Spring 

Through the winter wandering. 

Found, it seems, the halcyon morn 385 

To hoar February born ; 

Bending from heaven, in azure mirth, 

It kiss'd the forehead of the earth, 

And smiled upon the silent sea, 

And bade the frozen streams be free, 390 

And waked to music all their fountains. 

And breathed upon the frozen mountains, 

And like a prophetess of May 

Strew'd flowers upon the barren way, 

Making the wintry world appear 395 

Like one on whom thou smilest, dear. 

Away, away, from men and towns. 
To the wild wood and the downs — 
To the silent wilderness 

Where the soul need not repress 400 

Its music, lest it should not find 
An echo in another's mind. 
While the touch of Nature's art 
Harmonizes heart to heart. 

Radiant Sister of the Day 405 

Awake ! arise ! and come away 1 



Selected Poems 191 

To the wild woods and the plains, 

To the pools where winter rains 

Image all their roof of leaves, 

Where the pine its garland weaves 410 

Of sapless green, and ivy dun, 

Round stems that never kiss the sun ; 

Where the lawns and pastures be 

And the sandhills of the sea; 

Where the melting hoar-frost wets 415 

The daisy-star that never sets. 

And wind-flowers and violets 

Which yet join not scent to hue 

Crown the pale year weak and new ; 

When the night is left behind 420 

In the deep east, dim and blind, 

And the blue noon is over us, 

And the multitudinous 

Billows murmur at our feet, 

W^here the earth and ocean meet, 425 

And all things seem only one 

In the universal Sun. 

XII 

The Recollection 

Now the last day of many days 

All beautiful and bright as thou, 

The loveliest and the last, is dead : 430 

Rise, Memory, and write its praise ! 

Up — to thy wonted work ! come, trace 



192 Percy Bysshe Shelley 

The epitaph of glory fled, 

For now the earth has changed its face, 

A frown is on the heaven's brow. 435 

We wander'd to the Pine Forest 

That skirts the Ocean's foam ; 
The lightest wind was in its nest, 

The tempest in its home. 
The whispering waves were half asleep, 440 

The clouds were gone to play, 
And on the bosom of the deep 

The smile of heaven lay ; 
It seem'd as if the hour were one 

Sent from beyond the skies 445 

Which scatter'd from above the sun 

A light of Paradise ! 

We paused amid the pines that stood 

The giants of the waste, 
Tortured by storms to shapes as rude 450 

As serpents interlaced, — 
And soothed by every azure breath 

That under heaven is blown. 
To harmonies and hues beneath. 

As tender as its own : 455 

Now all the tree-tops lay asleep 

Like green waves on the sea. 
As still as in the silent deep 

The ocean-woods may be. 

How calm it was ! — The silence there 460 

By such a chain was bound, 



Selected Poems 193 

That even the busy woodpecker 

Made stiller with her sound 
The inviolable quietness ; 

The breath of peace we drew 465 

With its soft motion made not less 

The calm that round us grew. 
There seem'd, from the remotest seat 

Of the white mountain waste 
To the soft flower beneath our feet, 470 

A magic circle traced, — 
A spirit interfused around, 

A thrilling silent life ; 
To momentary peace it bound 

Our mortal nature's strife ; — 475 

And still I felt the centre of 

The magic circle there 
Was one fair form that fill'd with love 

The lifeless atmosphere. 

We paused beside the pools that lie 480 

Under the forest bough ; 
Each seem'd as 'twere a little sky 

Gulf 'd in a world below ; 
A firmament of purple light 

Which in the dark earth lay, 485 

More boundless than the depth of night 

And purer than the day — 
In which the lovely forests grew 

As in the upper air, 
More perfect both in shape and hue 490 

S'ELECTIONS — 1 3 



194 Percy Bysshe Shelley 

Than any spreading there. 
There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn, 

And through the dark-green wood 
The white sun twinkling like the dawn 

Out of a speckled cloud. 495 

Sweet views which in our world above 

Can never well be seen 
Were imaged in the water's love 

Of that fair forest green : 
And all was interfused beneath 500 

With an Elysian glow, 
An atmosphere without a breath, 

A softer day below. 
Like one beloved, the scene had lent 

To the dark water's breast 505 

Its every leaf and lineament 

With more than truth exprest ; 
Until an envious wind crept by, 

Like an unwelcome thought 
Which from the mind's too faithful eye 510 

Blots one dear image out. 
— Though thou art ever fair and kind, 

The forests ever green, 
Less oft is peace in Shelley's mind 

Than calm in waters seen ! 515 



Selected Poems 195 



XIII 

To THE Moon 

Art thou pale for weariness 
Of climbing heaven, and gazing on the earth, 

Wandering companionless 
Among the stars that have a different birth, — 
And ever-changing, like a joyless eye 520 

That finds no object worth its constancy ? 

XIV 
A Dream of the Unknown 

I dream 'd that as I wander 'd by the way 

Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring, 

And gentle odours led my steps astray, 

Mix'd with a sound of waters murmuring 525 

Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay 
Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling 

Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, 

But kiss'd it and then fled, as Thou mightest in dream. 

There grew pied wind-flowers and violets, 530 

Daisies, those pearl'd Arcturi of the earth, 

The constellated flower that never sets ; 

Faint oxlips ; tender blue-bells, at whose birth 

The sod scarce heaved ; and that tall flower that wets 



196 Percy Bysshe Shelley 

Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears, 535 

When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears. 

And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine, 

Green cow-bind and the moonlight-colour'd May, 

And cherr3^-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine 

Was the bright dew yet drain 'd not by the day ; 540 

And wild roses, and ivy serpentine 

With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray ; 

And flowers azure, black, and streak'd with gold. 

Fairer than any waken'd eyes behold. 

And nearer to the river's trembling edge 545 

There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prank'd with 
white. 

And starry river-buds among the sedge. 
And floating water-lilies, broad and bright, 

Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge 

With moonlight beams of their own watery light ; 550 

And bulrushes, and reeds of such deep green 

As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen. 

Methought that of these visionary flowers 
I made a nosegay, bound in such a way 

That the same hues, which in their natural bowers 555 
Were mingled or opposed, the like array 

Kept these imprison'd children of the Hours 
Within my hand, — and then, elate and gay, 

1 hasten'd to the spot whence I had come 

That I might there present it — O ! to Whom ? 560 



Selected Poems 197 

XV 

Written Among The Euganean Hills 

Many a green isle needs must be 

In the deep wide sea of Misery, 

Or the mariner, worn and wan. 

Never thus could voyage on 

Day and night, and night and day, 565 

Drifting on his dreary way, 

With the solid darkness black 

Closing round his vessel's track ; 

Whilst above, the sunless sky 

Big with clouds, hangs heavily, 570 

And behind the tempest fleet 

Hurries on with lightning feet, 

Riving sail, and cord, and plank. 

Till the ship has almost drank 

Death from the o'er-brimming deep ; 575 

And sinks down, down, like that sleep 

When the dreamer seems to be 

Weltering through eternity ; 

And the dim low line before 

Of a dark and distant shore 580 

Still recedes, as ever still 

Longing with divided will, 

But no power to seek or shun, 

He is ever drifted on 

O'er the unreposing wave, 585 

To the haven of the grave. 



198 Percy Bysshe Shelley 

Ah, many flowering islands lie 
In the waters of wdde Agony : 
To such a one this morn was led 
My bark, by soft winds piloted. 590 

— 'Mid the mountains Euganean 
I stood listening to the paean ^ 
With which the legion 'd rooks did hail 
The Sun's uprise majestical : 
Gathering round with wings all hoar, 595 

Through the dewy mist they soar 
Like gray shades, till the eastern heaven 
Bursts ; and then, — as clouds of even 
Fleck'd with fire and azure, lie 
In the unfathomable sky, — 600 

So their plumes of purple grain 
Starr'd with drops of golden rain 
Gleam above the sunlight woods, 
As in silent multitudes 

On the morning's fitful gale 605 

Through the broken mist they sail ; 
And the vapours cloven and gleaming 
Follow^ down the dark steep streaming, 
Till all is bright, and clear, and still 
Round the solitary hill. 610 

Beneath is spread like a green sea 
The waveless plain of Lombardy, 
Bounded by the vaporous air. 
Islanded by cities fair ; 

1 Triumphal hymn. 



Selected Poems 199 

Underneath Day's azure eyes, 615 

Ocean's nursling, Venice lies, — 

A peopled labyrinth of walls, 

Amphitrite's destined halls, 

Which her hoary sire now paves 

With his blue and beaming waves. 620 

Lo ! the sun upsprings behind, 

Broad, red, radiant, half-reclined 

On the level quivering line 

Of the waters crystalline ; 

And before that chasm of light, 625 

As within a furnace bright. 

Column, tower, and dome, and spire, 

Shine like obelisks of fire. 

Pointing with inconstant motion 

From the altar of dark ocean 630 

To the sapphire-tinted skies ; 

As the flames of sacrifice 

From the marble shrines did rise 

As to pierce the dome of gold 

Where Apollo spoke of old. 635 

Sun-girt City ! thou hast been 
Ocean's child, and then his queen ; 
Now is come a darker day, 
And thou soon must be his prey. 
If the power that raised thee here 640 

Hallow so thy watery bier. 
A less drear ruin then than now, 
With thy conquest-branded brow 



200 Percy Bysshe Shelley 

Stooping to the slave of slaves 

From thy throne among the waves 645 

Wilt thou be, — when the sea-mew 

Flies, as once before it flew, 

O'er thine isles depopulate, 

And all is in its ancient state, 

Save where many a palace-gate 650 

With green sea flowers overgrown 

Like a rock of ocean's own. 

Topples o'er the abandon 'd sea 

As the tides change sullenly. 

The fisher on his watery way 655 

Wandering at the close of day. 

Will spread his sail and seize his oar 

Till he pass the gloomy shore, 

Lest thy dead should, from their sleep, 

Bursting o'er the starlight deep, 660 

Lead a rapid masque of death 

O'er the waters of his path. 

Noon descends around me now : 
'Tis the noon of autumn's glow, 
When a soft and purple mist 665 

Like a vaporous amethyst, 
Or an air-dissolved star 
Mingling light and fragrance, far 
From the curved horizon's bound 
To the point of heaven's profound, 670 

Fills the overflowing sky ; 
And the plains that silent lie 



Selected Poems 201 

Underneath ; the leaves unsodden 

Where the infant Frost has trodden 

With his morning-winged feet 675 

Whose bright print is gleaming yet ; 

And the red and golden vines 

Piercing with their trellised lines 

The rough, dark-skirted wilderness ; 

The dun and bladed grass no less, 680 

Pointing from this hoary tower 

In the windless air ; the flower 

Glimmering at my feet ; the line 

Of the olive-sandall'd Apennine 

In the south dimly islanded ; 685 

And the Alps, whose snows are spread 

High between the clouds and sun ; 

And of living things each one ; 

And my spirit, which so long 

Darken'd this swift stream of song, — 690 

Interpenetrated lie 

By the glory of the sky ; 

Be it love, light, harmony, 

Odour, or the soul of all 

Which from heaven like dew doth fall, 695 

Or the mind which feeds this verse, 

Peopling the lone universe. 

Noon descends, and after noon 
Autumn's evening meets me soon, 
Leading the infantine moon 700 

And that one star, which to her 



202 Percy Bysshe Shelley 

Almost seems to minister 

Half the crimson light she brings 

From the sunset's radiant springs : 

And the soft dreams of the morn 705 

(Which like winged winds had borne 

To that silent isle, which lies 

'Mid remember'd agonies, 

The frail bark of this lone being). 

Pass, to other sufferers fleeing, 7»o 

And its ancient pilot, Pain, 

Sits beside the helm again. 

Other flowering isles must be 
In the sea of Life and Agony : 
Other spirits float and flee 715 

O'er that gulf : Ev'n now, perhaps. 
On some rock the wild wave wraps, 
With folded wings they waiting sit 
For my bark, to pilot it 

To some calm and blooming cove ; 720 

Where for me, and those I love. 
May a windless bower be built, 
Far from passion, pain, and guilt, 
In a dell 'mid lawny hills 

Which the wild sea-murmur fills, 725 

And soft sunshine, and the sound 
Of old forests echoing round, 
And the light and smell divine 
Of all flowers that breathe and shine, 
— We may live so happy there, 730 



Selected Poems 203 

That the Spirits of the Air 

Env}dng us, may ev'n entice 

To our healing paradise 

The polluting multitude : 

But their rage would be subdued 735 

By that clime divine and calm, 

And the winds whose wings rain balm 

On the uplifted soul, and leaves 

Under which the bright sea heaves ; 

While each breathless interval 740 

In their whisperings musical 

The inspired soul supplies 

With its own deep melodies ; 

And the Love which heals all strife 

Circling, like the breath of life, 745 

All things in that sweet abode 

With its own mild brotherhood : — 

They, not it, would change ; and soon 

Every sprite beneath the moon 

Would repent its envy vain, 750 

And the Earth grow young again. 



XVI 

Ode to the West Wind 

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, 
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead 
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, 
Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, 755 



204 Percy Bysshe Shelley 

Pestilence-stricken multitudes ! O thou 

Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed 

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, 

Each like a corpse within its grave, until 

Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow 760 

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill 

(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) 

With living hues and odours plain and hill : 

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere ; 

Destroyer and Preserver ; Hear, oh hear ! 765 

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commo- 
tion. 
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed. 
Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean, 
Angels of rain and lightning ! there are spread 
On the blue surface of thine airy surge, 770 

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 
Of some fierce Maenad, ev'n from the dim verge 
Of the horizon to the zenith's height — 
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge 
Of the dying year, to which this closing night 775 

Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre. 
Vaulted with all thy congregated might 
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere 
Black rain, and fire, and hail, will burst : Oh hear ! 

Thou who didst waken from his summer-dreams 780 
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 
Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams, 



Selected Poems 205 

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, 

And saw in sleep old palaces and towers 

Quivering within the wave's intenser day, 785 

All overgrown with azure moss, and flowers 

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them ! Thou 

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers 

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below 

The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear 790 

The sapless foliage of the ocean, know 

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear 

And tremble and despoil themselves : Oh hear ! 

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear ; 
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee ; 795 

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share 
The impulse of thy strength, only less free 
Than Thou, O uncontrollable ! If even 
I were as in my boyhood, and could be 
The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, 800 

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed 
Scarce seem'd a vision, — I would ne'er have striven 
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. 
Oh ! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud ! 
I fall upon the thorns of life ! I bleed ! 805 

A heavy weight of hours has chain 'd and bow'd 
One too like thee — tameless, and swift, and proud. 
* 

Make me thy lyre, ev'n as the forest is : 
What if my leaves are falling like its own ! 
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 810 



2o6 Percy Bysshe Shelley 

Will take from both a deep autumnal tone, 

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, 

My spirit ! be thou me, impetuous one ! 

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe, 

Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth ; 815 

And, by the incantation of this verse, 

Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth 

Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind 1 

Be through my lips to unwaken'd earth 

The trumpet of a prophecy ! O Wind, 820 

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? 



XVII 
The Poet's Dream 

On a Poet's lips I slept 

Dreaming like a love-adept 

In the sound his breathing kept ; 

Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses, 825 

But feeds on the aerial kisses 

Of shapes that haunt Thought's wildernesses. 

He will watch from dawn to gloom 

The lake-reflected sun illume 

The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, 830 

Nor heed nor see what things they be — 
But from these create he can 
Forms more real than living Man, 

Nurslings of Immortality ! 



Selected Poems 207 

XVIII 
A Dirge 

Rough wind, that moanest loud S35 

Grief too sad for song ; 
Wild wind, when sullen cloud 

Knells all the night long ; 
Sad storm whose tears are vain, 
Bare woods whose branches stain, 840 

Deep caves and dreary main, — 

Wail for the world's wrong ! 

XIX 

Threnos 

O World ! O Life ! O Time ! 
On whose last steps I climb. 

Trembling at that where I had stood before ; 845 
When will return the glory of your prime ? 
No more — Oh, never more ! 

Out of the day and night 
A joy has taken flight : 

Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar 850 
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight 
No more — Oh, never more ! 

XX 

Music, when soft voices die. 
Vibrates in the memory — 



2o8 Percy Bysshe Shelley 

Odours, when sweet violets sicken, 855 

Live within the sense they quicken. 

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead. 

Are heap'd for the beloved's bed ; 

And so thy thoughts, when Thou art gone. 

Love itself shall slumber on. 860 



JOHN KEATS 
I. Life 

To die an Immortal, at the age of twenty-five, was 
the fate of John Keats. He was the eldest son of 
Thomas Keats, head ostler in a livery stable, who had 
married his employer's daughter, Elizabeth Jennings, 
and risen to be manager of the Swan-and-Hoop, Fins- 
bury Pavement, London. The poet's birth at this 
stable, on either the 29th or the 31st of October, 
1795, is of almost Biblical dignity. 

His parents, who were not without means, energy, and 
natural gifts, had ambitions for their son. Harrow be- 
ing somewhat beyond them, they sent him to a good 
and pleasant school kept by the Reverend John Clarke 
at Enfield. Soon after, in 1804, Thomas Keats, riding 
home at night, fell from his horse and was killed. 
The widow, after an unhappy second marriage and 
speedy separation, made a home for herself and her 
children at Edmonton. Here, and at the Enfield 
school, Keats passed a pleasant boyhood. Through 
the holidays he played in the brooks, caught small 
fishes and kept them alive in tubs, and was, as he 
said long afterward, very fond " of Goldfishes, Tom- 
tits, Minnows, Mice, Ticklebacks, Dace, Cock Sal- 

SELECTIONS — 1 4 209 



2IO John Keats 

mons, and all the whole tribe of the Bushes and the 
Brooks." At school he was a leader, distinguished by 
his good looks, good nature, and love of battles. He 
fought both with and for his younger, bigger brother 
George, and the two joined forces to protect their frail 
junior, Tom. A schoolmate thus remembered the poet : 
" Keats was in childhood not attached to books. His 
penchant was for fighting. He would fight any one — 
morning, noon, and night, his brother among the rest. 
It was meat and drink to him. . . . His favourites 
were few; after they were known to fight readily he 
seemed to prefer them for a sort of grotesque and buf- 
foon humour. . . . He was a boy whom any one from 
his extraordinary vivacity and personal beauty might 
easily fancy would become great — but rather in some 
mihtary capacity than in literature. ... In all active 
exercises he excelled." The same schoolmate, after 
speaking of his " daring," his " violence and vehe- 
mence . . . pugnacity and generosity . . . passions of 
tears or outrageous fits of laughter " — said that "asso- 
ciated as they were with an extraordinary beauty of 
person and expression, these qualities captivated the 
boys, and no one was more popular." 

In his fourteenth year, this " favourite of all," this 
" pet prize-fighter " with his " terrier courage," sud- 
denly bent all his forces to the study of books, won all 
the literature prizes, and of his own free will began to 
translate the whole ^neid. His lifelong friend, the 
master's son, Charles Cowden Clarke, recalled him as 
reading even at supper, " sitting back on the form from 



Introduction 



21 I 



the table, holding the folio volume of Burnet's History 
of his Own Ti7?te between himself and the table, eat- 
ing his meal from beyond it." Greek mythology, the 
beauty of ancient fable, became his long study and 
deep delight. 

In the winter of 1810, however, his mother died. 
Keats had " sat up whole nights wdth her in a great 
chair, would suffer nobody to give her medicine, or 
even to cook her food, but himself " ; and after her 
death " gave way to such impassioned and prolonged 
grief (hiding himself in a nook under the master's 
desk) as awakened the liveliest pity and sympathy in 
all who saw him." His guardians, a merchant and a 
tea-dealer, soon decided that he had been long enough 
at school ; and when he was fifteen years old, with- 
drawing him from Enfield, bound him as apprentice 
to a surgeon, a Mr. Hammond, at Edmonton. Till the 
autumn of 18 14, Keats studied with this surgeon, drove 
with him, and held his horse ; but a quarrel ended their 
relation, and the apprentice, released, went in his nine- 
teenth year to London. He continued to study his 
profession, passed with credit as licentiate at Apothe- 
caries' Hall, and on March 3, 18 16, was appointed a 
dresser under a Mr. Lucas, surgeon at Guy's Hospital. 
He showed both knowledge and skill. In the arbour 
at Enfield, however, Cowden Clarke had opened for 
him not only Spenser's enchanted book, but all those 
western islands "that bards in fealty to Apollo hold," 
.To Cowden Clarke, in 1815, Keats had given the two 
sonnets. Written on the day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left 



212 John Keats 

Prison^ and On First Looking into Chapman'' s 
Homer. And now Keats, living with his brothers 
— hke poor Susan's thrush, in " the vale of Cheap- 
side " — was haunted more and more by aspirations. 
"The other day, during the lecture," he said, "there 
came a sunbeam into the room, and with it a whole 
troop of creatures floating in the ray, and I was off 
with them to Oberon and fairyland." The falsity of 
the situation weighed on him, — that a poet's mind 
should direct a surgeon's hand. " My last operation 
was the opening of a man's temporal artery. I did it 
with the utmost nicety, but reflecting on what passed 
through my mind at the time, my dexterity seemed a 
miracle, and I never took up the lancet again." He 
was becoming friends with many young men of literary 
bent, — George Mathew, Newmarch, Reynolds,* the 
painter Haydon, Joseph Severn, a struggling student 
of art, Leigh Hunt, the Liberal editor and poet, and — 
in the spring of 1817 — Shelley. In that same fortu 
nate spring, Keats chose his career, and gave the world 
his first volume of poems. 

Popularly, the book was not successful, for in the 
public splendour of Thomas Moore, Scott, and Byron, this 
newcomer was lost. Published in March, his volume 
had already stopped selHng, when Keats, in April, 
settled at the Isle of Wight. Not at all disheartened, 
he wrote from Carisbrooke : " I find I cannot do with- 
out poetry — without eternal poetry ; half the day will 
not do — the whole of it. ... I had become all in a 
tremble from not having written anything of late. . . . 



Introduction 213 

I shall forthwith begin my Efidymion.'** Wandering 
from the Isle of Wight to Margate and to Canterbury, 
and afterward joining his brothers in lodgings at 
Hampstead, he not only worked at Endy7nio7i, visited 
Leigh Hunt in the Vale of Health, and made friends 
of Dilke, Charles Brown, and Bailey, but defeated in a 
good, stand-up fight a ruffianly young butcher who was 
caught tormenting a cat. For a few weeks, in the 
winter of 18 17-18, he wrote dramatic criticisms for the 
Chavipion. He now began to see more of people, and 
to dine out, though he never cared for "fashionables," 
for wits " all alike," who "say things which make one 
start without making one feel." He was more at ease 
in such a company as gathered in Haydon's studio at 
the " immortal dinner " on December 28, 1817, where 
" Wordsworth's fine intonation as he quoted Milton 
and Virgil, Keats's eager inspired look. Lamb's quaint 
sparkle of lambent humour . . . speeded the conversa- 
tion." In conversation, however, Keats did not shine, 
except fitfully. Sometimes he delighted his friends by 
chanting verses "in his low tremulous undertone " : 
sometimes made them laugh with clever but kindly 
mimicry ; more often he stayed apart in the window- 
seat, listening, or with his golden-brown head sunk in 
thought. 

In the winter of 18 18 he saw much of Hunt, and 
something of Shelley, with both of whom he competed 
in writing a sonnet on the River Nile. Meantime, he 
was writing Isabella, the lines on Robin Hood, and the 
sonnets beginning " Chief of organic numbers " — " O 



214 John Keats 

golden-tongued Romance " — and " When I have fears 
that I may cease to be." In the spring appeared his 
first great work, Endyi?iion. The preface to this poem 
will show that Keats — like Shakespeare, "desiring this 
man's art and that man's scope " — had both true am- 
bition and true modesty. " It is just," he wrote, " that 
this youngster {Endymioii) should die away ; a sad 
thought for me, if I had not some hope that while it is 
dwindling I may be plotting and fitting myself for 
verses fit to live." 

When he made this brave announcement, Keats had 
barely three years of life before him. You have now 
read the story of his happy years ; we shall not dwell on 
the unhappy. By the end of June, 1818, his brother 
George had married and emigrated to America ; by early 
December, Tom Keats, the youngest and frailest of the 
three, was released by death, after a long suffering 
which the poet had outwatched wath heroic tenderness. 
In the meantime, through July, Charles Brown had 
taken Keats on a walking tour through Scotland, — a 
fatal tour : the sombre North chilled and rebuked the 
poet's genius ; hardship and exposure broke his health, 
and sowed mortal seeds. The brutal critics of Black- 
wood'' s and the Quarterly — who cried out "back to 
the shop, Mr. John, stick to plasters, pills, ointment 
boxes," and who called his poetry "calm, settled, . . . 
drivelling idiocy " — were attacking a foredoomed 
man. When Keats met Coleridge by chance in a 
Highgate lane, the truth was already perceptible. 
" After he had left us a little way," wrote the great. 



Introduction 215 

dark poet of the supernatural, " he ran back and said, 
' Let me carry away the memory, Coleridge, of having 
pressed your hand.' 'There is death in that hand,' I 
said, when Keats was gone." 

The hand spoke truly, for in this brave and beautiful 
spirit, death and immortality now contended. And to 
the fever of this conflict, after his meeting w^ith Fanny 
Brawne in 18 18, was added the hopeless love of a man 
without health and without prospects. But even in 
sickness and distress, his genius continued to flame. 
In January, 18 19, he finished The Eve of St. Agnes ^ 
and began The Eve of St. Mark; in February, the 
odes On Lidolence and On a Grecian Urn^ and the lines 
which begin " Bards of passion and of mirth " ; by April 
15, the ode To Psyche. A few days later he found 
that a nightingale was building her nest in Brown's 
garden. " Keats felt," said Brown, " a tranquil and 
continual joy in her song; and one morning he took 
his chair from the breakfast table to the grass-plot 
under a plum, where he sat for two or three hours. 
When he came into the house, I perceived be had some 
scraps of paper in his hand, and these he was quietly 
thrusting behind the books. On inquiry, I found those 
scraps, four or five in number, contained his poetic feel- 
ing on the song of our nightingale. The writing was not 
well legible ; and it was difiicult to arrange the stanzas 
on so many scraps. With his assistance I succeeded, and 
this was his Ode to a Nightingale.^'' At about this time 
Keats had finished Hyperion : in the same spring or the 
following summer, he wrote La Belle Dainc sans Me?ri ; 



2i6 John Keats 

and in the autumn, during the " last good days of his 
life," composed Lamia, the tragedy of Otho, and his 
last ode, 7^ Autumn. The list closes with two frag- 
ments, the Cap a?id Bells and the Vision, and with the 
sonnet written on board ship in his last voyage, — 
Bright star, would I were as steadfast as thou art. 

What remains you can best learn from his friends' 
words and his own. One bitterly cold night, February 3, 
1820, Keats came home to Brown's house in a high 
fever. "I entered his chamber," said Brown, "as he 
leapt into bed. On entering the cold sheets, before his 
head was on the pillow, he slightly coughed, and I 
heard him say, — 'That is blood from my mouth.' 
. . . He was examining a single drop of blood upon 
the sheet. ' Bring me the candle, Brown, and let me see 
this blood.' After regarding it steadfastly, he looked 
up in my face, with a calmness of countenance that I 
can never forget, and said, — ' I know the colour of that 
blood ; — it is arterial blood ; — I cannot be deceived 
in that colour; — that drop of blood is my death-war- 
rant ; — I must die. ' " 

With a surgeon's knowledge of his case, and a lover's 
despair, Keats accepted it manfully, and, on the whole, 
cheerfully. He wrote of himself : " For six months 
before I was taken ill I had not passed a tranquil day. 
Either that gloom overspread me, or I was suffering 
under some passionate feeling." But now, lying in 
bed, he thought " of green fields," and perceived "how 
astonishingly does the chance of leaving the world im- 
press a sense of its natural beauties upon us ! " That 



Introduction 217 

chance drew near so rapidly that on September 18, 
1820, he said farewell to many loving friends, and 
sailed for Naples with one devoted companion, Joseph 
Severn. In his anguish at leaving Fanny Brawne, he 
wrote to Brown from Italy : " I can bear to die — I 
cannot bear to leave her. . . . Oh God ! . . . Every- 
thing I have in my trunks that reminds me of her goes 
through me like "a spear. The silk lining she put in 
my travelling cap scalds my head. ... I see her — 
I hear her. . . . Oh, Brown, I have coals of fire in my 
breast. It surprises me that the human heart is capable 
of containing and bearing so much misery." But by 
degrees, as he lay dying at Rome, these intolerable 
pangs left him. Though he could not wholly believe, 
the kindness of the devoted Severn, a true man and 
noble Christian, helped his unbelief. " Poor Keats," 
wrote Severn, " has me ever by him, and shadows out 
the form of one solitary friend : he opens his eyes in 
great doubt and horror, but when they fall on me they 
close gently, open quietly and close again, till he sinks 
to sleep." — " Doctor," he asked patiently, " when will 
this posthumous life of mine come to an end ? " And 
again he said — " I feel the flowers growing over me." 
On February 23, 182 1, " about four," Severn has told 
us, " the approaches of death came on. ' Severn — I — 
lift me up — I am dying — I shall die easy; don't be 
frightened — be firm, and thank God it has come.' " 

Keats was buried — as both Shelley and Severn were 
afterward — in the Protestant cemetery at Rome, near 
the pyramid of Caius Cestius, 



2 1 8 John Keats 



II. Poems 

" I hope," said Keats, in his preface to Endymion, 
" I hope I have not in too late a day touched the beauti- 
ful mythology of Greece, and dulled its brightness." 
When you have read that poem, and his later Hyperiotiy 
you may judge for yourselves whether in his hands the 
beauties of Greek fable became any less bright. Lovers 
of Keats think not ; and some, too zealous in his praise, 
have called Keats a poet of Greek life, and his spirit 
the Greek spirit. It is true that in the Ode to Autumn 
the imagery, the vivid, beautiful personification of that 
mellow season, is thoroughly pagan : — 

" Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store ? 
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find 
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, 
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; 
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, 
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook 
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: 
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep 
Steady thy laden head across a brook : 
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, 
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours." 

This is from the last great poem which Keats wrote ; 
and in one of his earliest you will find a beautiful pas- 
sage which begins — 

" Queen of the wide air; thou most lovely queen," 

and which describes the bridal night of Cynthia, goddess 
of the moon. In manv other instances, the moon in 



Introduction 219 

this poet's sky is not the pale weary satellite that Shelley 
watched and questioned, but the mystic form of Selene, 
as figured by the Greeks. Forces of nature Keats 
loved to think of as mythical beings, half human, half 
divine, like the daughter of Hyperion, when — 
" One hand she press'd upon that aching spot 
Where beats the human heart, as if just there 
Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain." 

Yet you should remember that Keats, though he em- 
ployed these figures of pagan speech, did not actually 
people his world with them, but used them as adornments. 
He is a Greek in his power to speak out freely all that 
is in him, whether it be simple or complex, new or old. 
The mythology of Hellas was to him always a wonder 
and a delight. But Keats was also, in the depths of 
his genius, a romantic poet who studied and recalled 
the beauties of Elizabethan fancy, and whose tales 
move through the enchanted forest of the Faery Queen. 

" Poetry," he once wrote, " must surprise by a fine 
excess." The poet should be — 

" Filling every sense with spiritual sweets, 
As bees gorge full their cells." 

This fine excess Keats drew not only from classic and 
mediaeval story, but even more from nature, from his own 
outdoor world in England. Like Shakespeare, he was 
always one to 

"... watch intently Nature's gentle doings." 

For this reason, because his mood was not that of a 
teacher or moralist but of a loving observer, Keats was 



220 John Keats 

able to surprise and waylay those half-hidden bits of 
magic, in tranquillity or change, those little mysteries 
among the leaves, which most of us live and die without 
seeing. 

" Here are sweet peas, on tiptoe for a flight : 
With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white, 
And taper fingers catching at all things, 
To bind them all about with tiny rings." 

Beside a brook he sees the minnows — 
"... how they ever wrestle 

With their own sweet delight, and ever nestle 
Their silver bellies on the pebbly sand." 

Behind the life which is in all these things, Keats 
rarely, if ever, suggests the presence — so real and so 
full of awe to Wordsworth — of a mighty impulse and 
everlasting purpose. Keats wanders afield, to " enjoy 
delight with liberty." In his early poems, the liberty 
is almost too roving, the beauty of details excessive ; so 
that his friend Leigh Hunt was not unjust in accusing 
him of a " tendency to notice everything too indiscrimi- 
nately, and without an eye to natural proportion and 
effect." In his narrative poems, the story often becomes 
tangled in flowery thickets ; the foreground, though 
rich and lovely, has no great gaps through which the 
imagination may see into the distance ; and the persons 
of his tale pause in some luxuriant place without activity 
or passion to make them dramatic. But these faults 
belonged to the poet's youth, and had left him, or were 
leaving him, when his power and his life were cut short. 
The poems in this book are not Keats 's first wayward 



Introduction 221 

attempts ; they show how perfectly this spirit of hberty 
and delight had learned to select and to simplify, and 
without hovering too fondly over an image of beauty, 
to record it in happy words that linger and haunt. 

With this felicity of language — often compared to 
Shakespeare's — Keats brings generous tribute to the 
great poets dead and gone, the " bards of passion and 
of mirth." The Ode on the Poets, the sonnet On First 
Looking into Chap mail's Honier, and the Lines on the Mer- 
7naid lavern are the golden coins with which Keats 
pays his reckoning and takes his seat among the glori- 
ous company, — true coin of the realm, stamped with 
Apollo's countenance. La Belle Datne sans Merci. 
containing, in the compass of a short ballad, all 
the dark beauty of mediaeval fairyland and the obscure 
terror of warning dreams, conveys in elfin music the 
power with which Beauty, in all ages, holds her unre- 
quited slaves. In the odes, To Autumn, To a JVightingale^ 
and On a Grecian Urn, you will discover that odes, to 
be among the greatest in our language, need not follow 
tradition so far as to be declamatory or set above the 
pitch of ordinary music. These are quiet, meditative, 
with a kind of halcyon, autumnal beauty. There are no 
flights, pauses, and sudden swerves, no merely rhetori- 
cal fire, no changes from trumpet to flute, from lyre to 
sounding brass or full organ, such as Dry den used in 
Alexander's Feast. The music of Keats maintains an 
even tenor, or sinks as 

" . ... in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 
-Among the river sallows." 



222 John Keats 

His odes open with no sweeping invocations, but with 
a minor melody which at first seems hardly more audi- 
ble than a thought : — 

" Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, 
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time." 

It is this tranquillity of tone and of mood that allows 
Keats, unhurried by the changing rush and flow of the 
usual ode, to give in complete stanzas his clear and im- 
mortal pictures. Never has an ode contained a more 
vivid passage of description than his on the Grecian 
Urn: — 

** Who are these coming to the sacrifice? 

To what green altar, O mysterious priest, 
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, 

And all her silken flanks in garlands drest? 
What little town by river or sea shore 
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, 
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? 
And, little town, thy streets for evermore 
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell 

Why thou art desolate, can e'er return." 

When later you come to know the whole range of 
Keats's poetry, you will see in the odes a growing 
melancholy, a sense, unknown in his earlier delighted 
freedom, that beauty is transient, that all living forms 
of beauty pass into oblivion. Keats came to feel 
that — 

". . . in the very temple of Delight 
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine." 

The author of the sonnets beginning " When I have 



Introduction 223 

fear^ that I shall cease to be,"' and " Bright star, would 
1 were steadfast as thou art," had all too much reason 
to reflect on the brevity of life and the certainty of 
death. In his last days Keats wrote : " If I should die, 
I have left no immortal work behind me — nothing to 
make my friends proud of my memory; but I have 
loved the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had 
had time, I would have made myself remembered." 
The great web of Keats's poetry was rent across when 
he was merely beginning, merely emerging from the 
style of youth into the chastened style of manhood, to 
see that great verse cannot be written luxuriously. 
" English," he said, two years before his death, " ought 
to be kept up." He saw, in other words, that "the 
false beauty proceeding from art " must give way to 
"the true voice of feeling." In his short poems this 
transformation had already come. Keats's longer 
poems were still to be written. But without these, in 
his brief span, with dignity, tenderness, and glory, he 
had told the world — 

"'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' — that is all 

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." 



HI. Bibliographical Note 

Texts. — Poetical Wo7'ks^ with life by Lord Houghton, 
Aldine edition; Poetical Works^ with letters, ed. H. E. Scud- 
der, Cambridge edition ; Poerns, ed. F. T. Palgrave (Golden 
Treasury Series) ; Poems, ed. A. Bates (Athengeum Press 
Series). 



224 John Keats 

Biography ani Criticism. — Life, by S. Colvin (English 
Men of Letters) ; by W. M. Rossetti (Great Writers) ; 
Essays, by Matthew Arnold {Essays in O'lticisni) ; by J. R. 
Lowell {AfHong My Books) \ by D. Masson {lVordswo?-th, 
Shelley, Keats, and Other Essays) ; by A. C. Swinburne 
{Miscellanies) . 



SELECTIONS FROM KEATS 

PAGE 

Ode on the Poets 225 

On P^irst Looking into Chapman's Homer . . . 226 

Happy Insensibility 227 

La Belle Dame sans Merci 228 

Bright Star ! would I were steadfast as thou art . 230 

The Terror of Death 231 

The Mermaid Tavern 231 

Ode to a Nightingale 232 

To one who has been long in city pent . . . 235 

Ode to Autumn 236 

The Realm of Fancy 237 

Ode on a Grecian Urn 241 

The Human Seasons 243 



SELECTIONS FROM KEATS 



Ode on the Poets 

Bards of Passion and of Mirth 
Ye have left your souls on earth ! 
Have ye souls in heaven too, 
Double-lived in regions new ? 

— Yes, and those of heaven commune 
With the spheres of sun and moon ; 
With the noise of fountains wond'rous 
And the parle ^ of voices thund'rous ; 
With the whisper of heaven's trees 
And one another, in soft ease 
Seated on Elysian lawns 
Browsed by none but Dian's fawns ; 
Underneath large blue-bells tented, 
Where the daisies are rose-scented, 
And the rose herself has got 
Perfume which on earth is not ; 
Where the nightingale doth sing 
Not a senseless, tranced thing, 
1 Discourse, parley. 

SELECTIONS — 1 5 225 



226 . John Keats 

But divine melodious truth ; 

Philosophic numbers smooth; 20 

Tales and golden histories 

Of heaven and its mysteries. 

Thus ye live on high, and then 
On the earth ye live again ; 
And the souls ye left behind you 25 

Teach us, here, the way to find you, 
Where your other souls are joying, 
Never slumber'd never cloying. 
Here, your earth-born souls still speak 
To mortals, of their little week; 30 

Of their sorrows and delights ; 
Of their passions and their spites ; 
Of their glory and their shame ; 
What doth strengthen and what maim : — 
Thus ye teach us, every day, 35 

Wisdom, though fled far away. 

Bards of Passion and of Mirth 
Ye have left your souls on earth! 
Ye have souls in heaven too. 
Double-lived in regions new ! 40 

II 

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer 

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold 
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen ; 
Round many western islands have I been 
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. 



Selected Poems 227 

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 45 

That deep-brow 'd Homer ruled as his demesne : 
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene 
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold : 

— Then felt I like some w^atcher of the skies 
When a new planet swims into his ken ; 50 

Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes 

He stared at the Pacific — and all his men 
Look'd at each other wdth a wild surmise — 
Silent, upon a peak in Darien. 



Ill 

Happy Insensibility 

In a drear-nighted December, 55 

Too happy, happy tree, 

Thy branches ne'er remember 

Their green felicity : 

The north cannot undo them 

With a sleety whistle through them, 60 

Nor frozen thawings glue them 

From budding at the prime. 



In a drear-nighted December, 
Too happy, happy brook. 
Thy bubblings ne'er remember 
Apollo's summer look; 
But with a sweet forgetting 



228 John Keats 

They stay their cr3^stal fretting, 

Never, never petting 

About the frozen time. 70 

Ah ! would 'twere so with many 

A gentle girl and boy ! 

But were there ever any 

Writhed not at passed joy ? 

To know the change and feel it, 73 

When there is none to heal it, 

Nor numbed sense to steal it — 

Was never said in rhyme. 

IV 
La Belle Dame sans Merci 

* O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, 

Alone and palely loitering ? 80 

The sedge has wither'd from the lake, 
And no birds sing. 

* O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms 1 

So haggard and so woe-begone ? 
The squirrel's granary is full, 85 

And the harvest's done. 

* I see a lily on thy brow 

W^ith anguish moist and fever-dew. 
And on thy cheeks a fading rose 

Fast withereth too.' 90 



Selected Poems 229 

* I met a lady in the meads, 

Full beautiful — a faery's child, 
Her hair was long, her foot was light, 
And her eyes were wild. 

' I made a garland for her head, 95 

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone ; ^ 

She look'd at me as she did love, 
And made sweet moan. 

* I set her on my pacing steed 

And nothing else saw all day long, 100 

For sidelong would she bend, and sing 
A faery's song. 

* She found me roots of relish sweet. 

And honey wild and manna-dew, 
And sure in language strange she said 105 

"Hove thee true." 

* She took me to her elfin grot. 

And there she wept and sigh'd full sore ; 
And there I shut her wild wild eyes 

With kisses four. no 

' And there she lulled me asleep. 

And there I dream 'd — Ah ! woe betide ! 

The latest dream I ever dream 'd 
On the cold hill's side. 

'■ I saw pale kings and princes too, 115 

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all : 
1 Belt. 



230 John Keats 

Tney cried — '' La belle Dame sans Merci 
Hath thee in thrall ! " 

' I saw their starved lips in the gloam 

With horrid warning gaped wide, 120 

And I awoke and found me here 

On the cold hill's side. 

* And this is why I sojourn here 

Alone and palely loitering, 
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake, 125 

And no birds sing.' 



Bright Star ! would I were steadfast as thou art — 

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, 

And watching, with eternal lids apart. 

Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite,^ 130 

The moving waters at their priestlike task 
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, 
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask 
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors : — 

No — yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, 135 

Pillow'd upon my fair Love's ripening breast 
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, 
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest ; 



Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath. 
And so live ever, — or else swoon to death. 

1 Hermit. 



140 



Selected Poems 23 



VI 

The Terror of Death 

When I have fears that I may cease to be 
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, 
Before high-piled books, in charact'ry 
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen 'd grain ; 

When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, 145 

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, 

And think that I may never live to trace 

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance ; 

And when I feel, fair Creature of an hour ! 
That I shall never look upon thee more, 150 

Never have relish in the faery power 
Of unreflecting love — then on the shore 

Of the wide world I stand alone, and think 
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink. 

VH 

The Mermaid Tavern 

Souls of Poets dead and gone, 155 

What Elysium have ye known, 

Happy field or mossy cavern. 

Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern ? 

Have ye tippled drink more fine 

Than mine host's Canary wine ? 160 



232 John Keats 

Or are fruits of Paradise 

Sweeter than those dainty pies 

Of venison ? O generous food ! 

Drest as though bold Robin Hood 

Would, with his Maid Marian, 165 

Sup and bowse ^ from horn and can. 

I have heard that on a day 
Mine host's sign-board flew away 
Nobody knew whither, till 
An astrologer's old quill 170 

To a sheepskin gave the story. 
Said he saw you in your glory. 
Underneath a new-old sign 
Sipping beverage divine, 

And pledging with contented smack 175 

The Mermaid in the Zodiac. 

Souls of Poets dead and gone, 
What Elysium have ye known, 
Happy field or mossy cavern, 
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern ? 180 

VIII 
Ode To A Nightingale 

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains 
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, 

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk : 

1 Drink. 



Selected Poems * 2^2 

'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, 185 

But being too happy in thine happiness, — 
That thou, Hght-winged Dryad of the trees, 
In some melodious plot 
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, 

Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 190 

O, for a draught of vintage ! that hath been 

Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth. 
Tasting of Flora and the country green. 

Dance, and Provengal song, and sunburnt mirth ! 
O for a beaker, full of the warm South, 195 

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, 
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, 
And purple-stained mouth ; 
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, 

And with thee fade away into the forest dim ; 200 

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget 

What thou among the leaves hast never known. 
The weariness, the fever, and the fret 

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan ; 
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, 205 

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies ; 
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow 
And leaden-eyed despairs ; 
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, 

Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. 21a 

Away ! away ! for I will fly to thee. 

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, 



234 John Keats 

But on the viewless wings of Poesy, 

Though the dull brain perplexes and retards ; 
Already with thee ! tender is the night, 215 

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, 
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays ; 
But here there is no light, 
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown 
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy 
ways. 220 

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, 

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, 
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet 

Wherewith the seasonable month endows 
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild ; 225 

White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine ; 
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves ; 
And mid-May's eldest child, 
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine. 

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. 230 

Darkling I listen ; and for many a time 

I have been half in love with easeful Death, 
Call'd him soft names in many a mus^d rhyme, 

To take into the air my quiet breath ; 
Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 235 

To cease upon the midnight with no pain. 
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad 
In such an ecstasy ! 
Still.wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain — 
To thy high requiem become a sod. 240 



Selected Poems 235 

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird I 

No hungry generations tread thee down ; 
The voice I hear this passing night was heard 

In ancient days by emperor and clown : 
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 245 

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, 
She stood in tears amid the alien corn ; 
The same that oft-times hath 
Charm 'd magic casements, opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 250 

Forlorn ! the very word is like a bell 

To toll me back from thee to my sole self I 

Adieu ! the fancy cannot cheat so "well 
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf. 

Adieu ! adieu ! thy plaintive anthem fades 255 

Past the near meadows, over the still stream, 
, Up the hill-side ; and now 'tis buried deep 

In the next valley-glades : 
Was it a vision, or a waking dream ? 

Fled is that music : — Do I wake or sleep ? 260 

IX 

To one who has been long in city pent, 

'Tis very sweet to look into the fair 

And open face of heaven, — to breathe a prayer 

Full in the smile of the blue firmament. 

Who is more happy, when, with heart's content, 265 
Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair 



236 John Keats 

Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair 
And gentle tale of love and languishment? 

Returning home at evening, with an ear 
Catching the notes of Philomel, — an eye 270 

Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career, 

He mourns that day so soon has glided by : 
E'en like the passage of an angel's tear 
That falls through the clear ether silently. 



Ode to Autumn 

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, 275 

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun ; 

Conspiring with him how to load and bless 

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run ; 

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees. 

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core ; 280 

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells 

With a sweet kernel ; to set budding more, 

And still more, later flowers for the bees, 

Until they think warm days will never cease ; 

For Summer has o'erbrimm'd their clammy cells. 285 

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store ? 
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find 
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor. 
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind ; 



Selected Poems 237 

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, 290 

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook 
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers : 
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep 
Steady thy laden head across a brook : 
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, 295 

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. 

Where are the songs of Spring ? Ay, where are they ? 

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, — 

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day 

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue ; 300 

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn 

Among the river sallows, borne aloft 

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies ; 

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn ; 

Hedge-crickets sing ; and now with treble soft 305 

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft ; 

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. 



XI 

The Realm of Fancy 

Ever let the Fancy roam ; 

Pleasure never is at home : 

At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth, 310 

Like to bubbles when rain pelteth ; 

Then let winged Fancy wander 

Through the thought still spread beyond her : 



238 John Keats 

Open wide the mind's cage-door, 

She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar. 315 

O sweet Fancy I let her loose ; 

Summer's joys are spoilt by use, 

And the enjoying of the Spring 

Fades as does its blossoming ; 

Autumn's red-lipp'd fruitage too, 320 

Blushing through the mist and dew, 

Cloys with tasting : What do then ? 

Sit thee by the ingle, when 

The sear faggot blazes bright, 

Spirit of a winter's night ; 325 

When the soundless earth is muffled, 

And the caked snow is shuffled 

From the ploughboy's heavy shoon ; 

When the Night doth meet the Noon 

In a dark conspiracy 330 

To banish Even from her sky. 

Sit thee there, and send abroad, 

With a mind self-overaw'd, 

Fancy, high-commission'd : — send her ! 

She has vassals to attend her : 335 

She will bring, in spite of frost, 

Beauties that the earth hath lost ; 

She will bring thee, all together, 

All delights of summer weather ; 

All the buds and bells of May, 340 

From dewy sward or thorny spray ; 

All the heaped Autumn's wealth, 

With a still, mysterious stealth : 



Selected Poems 239 

She will mix these pleasures up 

Like three fit wines in a cup, 345 

And thou shalt quaff it : — thou shalt hear 

Distant harvest-carols clear ; 

Rustle of the reaped corn ; 

Sweet birds antheming the morn : 

And, in the same moment — hark I 350 

'Tis the early April lark. 

Or the rooks, with busy caw, 

Foraging for sticks and straw. 

Thou shalt, at one glance, behold 

The daisy and the marigold ; 355 

White-plumed lilies, and the first 

Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst ; 

Shaded hyacinth, alway 

Sapphire queen of the mid-May ; 

And every leaf, and every flower 360 

Pearled with the self-same shower. 

Thou shalt see the field-mouse peep 

Meagre from its celled sleep ; 

And the snake all winter-thin 

Cast on sunny bank its skin ; 365 

Freckled nest-eggs thou shalt see 

Hatching in the hawthorn-tree, 

When the hen-bird's wing doth rest 

Quiet on her mossy nest ; 

Then the hurry and alarm 370 

When the bee-hive casts its swarm ; 

Acorns ripe down-pattering, 

While the autumn breezes sing. 



240 John Keats 

Oh, sweet Fancy ! let her loose ; 

Everything is spoilt by use : 375 

Where's the cheek that doth not fade, 

Too much gazed at ? Where's the maid 

Whose lip mature is ever new ? 

Where's the eye, however blue, 

Doth not weary ? Where's the face 380 

One would meet in every place ? 

Where's the voice, however soft, 

One would hear so very oft ? 

At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth 

Like to bubbles when rain pelteth. 3S5 

Let then winged Fancy find 

Thee a mistress to thy mind : 

Dulcet-eyed as Ceres' daughter, 

Ere the God of Torment taught her 

How to frown and how to chide ; 390 

With a waist and with a side 

White as Hebe's, when her zone 

Slipt its golden ciasp, and down 

Fell her kirtle to her feet. 

While she held the goblet sweet, 395 

And Jove grew languid. — Break the mesh 

Of the Fancy's silken leash ; 

Quickly break her prison-string. 

And such joys as these she'll bring. 

— Let the winged Fancy roam, 400 

Pleasure never is at home. 



Selected Poems 241 

XII 

Ode on a Grecian Urn 

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, 

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, 
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express 

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme : 405 

What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape 

Of deities or mortals, or of both. 
In Temp^ or the dales of Arcady? 

What men or gods are these ? What maidens loth ? 

What mad pursuit'? What struggle to escape ? 410 
What pipes and timbrels ? What wild ecstasy ? 

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard 

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on ; 
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, 

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone : 415 

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare ; 
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss. 
Though winning near the goal — yet, do not grieve ; 

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, 420 
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair ! 

Ah, happy, happy boughs ! that cannot shed 
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu ; 

And, happy melodist, unwearied. 

For ever piping songs for ever new; 425 

SELECTIONS — 1 6 



242 John Keats 

More happy love, more happy, happy love ! 
For ever warm and still to be enjoy 'd. 
For ever panting, and for ever young ; 
All breathing human passion far above. 

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, 430 
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. 

Who are these coming to the sacrifice ? 

To what green altar, O mysterious priest. 
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, 

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest ? 435 
What little town by river or sea shore. 

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, 
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn ? 
And, little town, thy streets for evermore 

Will silent be ; and not a soul to tell 440 

Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. 

O Attic shape ! Fair attitude ! with brede ^ 

Of marble men and maidens overwrought, 
With forest branches and the trodden weed ; 

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought 445 
As doth eternity : Cold Pastoral ! 

When old age shall this generation waste. 
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe 
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, 

' Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' — that is all 450 

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. 

1 Embroidery. 



Selected Poems 243 

XIII 

The Human Seasons 

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year ; 

There are four seasons in the mind of man : 

He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear 

Takes in all beauty with an easy span : 455 

He has his Summer, when luxuriously 
Spring's honey 'd cud of youthful thought he loves 
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high 
Is nearest unto heaven : quiet coves 

His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings 460 

He furleth close : contented so to look 
On mists in idleness — to let fair things 
Passed by unheeded as a threshold brook. 

He has his Winter too of pale misfeature, 

Or else he would forego his mortal nature. 465 



ROBERT BROWNING 

I. Life 

Robert Browning, born in Camberwell on May 
7, 1812, belonged — like most of the great English 
poets — to what their countrymen call the middle class. 
His father was a clerk in the Bank of England, his 
mother the daughter of William Wiedemann, a German 
ship-owner who had settled and married at Dundee. 
Their house, in the London suburb of Camberwell, was 
a quiet place, as their life was serene and happy. The 
poet's father, a man of intelligence and refinement, not 
only possessed such accomplishments as drawing and 
painting in water-colours, but was a student, a sensible 
critic, and a lover of books, pictures, and poetry. At 
dusk, in his library, he used to walk up and down with 
the little boy in his arms, singing him to sleep with 
fragments of Anacreon, — the Greek words set to old 
English tunes. He loved his son greatly. " My dear 
father," wrote Browning afterwards, "put me in a 
condition most favourable for the best work I was cap- 
able of. When I think of the many authors who have 
had to fight their way through all sorts of difficulties, 
I have no reason to be proud of my achievements. . . . 
He secured for me all the ease and comfort that a literary 
man needs to do good work. It would have been 

245 



246 Robert Browning 

shameful if I had not done my best to realize his ex- 
pectations of me." Of his mother the poet said — 
" She was a divine woman." To his latest day he 
could hardly speak of her without tears in his eyes. 

His boyhood was quiet and happy. He was an 
energetic boy, fond not only of books, pictures, and 
music, but of living things, which he collected in a 
small menagerie, — speckled frogs, monkeys, owls, 
hedgehogs. As for books, " the first .... I ever bought 
in my life," he tells us, was Ossian ; and " the first 
composition I was ever guilty of, was something in 
imitation of Ossian." He wrote early and constantly. 
" I never can recollect not writing rhymes ; . . . but I 
knew they were nonsense even then." Byron's poetry 
and fame soon captivated him, and inspired a feeling 
which he said he "always retained ... in many re- 
spects. ... I would at any time have gone to Finchley to 
see a curl of [Byron's] hair or one of his gloves . . . 
while Heaven knows that I could not get up enthusiasm 
enough to cross the room if at the other end of it all 
Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey were condensed 
into the little china bottle yonder." Browning's earliest 
poems — the unpublished Incondita, written at the age 
of twelve — were a boy's vision of Byronic romance. 

Of his days in Mr. Ready's school at Peckham, where 
he remained till he was fourteen, there is little to say. 
He was not a schoolboy hero, like Keats. A few 
facts stand out in this uneventful period. One memor- 
able night, among the elms above Norwood, he saw 
for the first time the lights of London, and was marvel- 



Introduction 247 

loLisly affected by the spectacle of that distant, pulsat- 
ing mystery. No less memorable was the day when, 
passing a small book-shop, he saw in the window, and 
bought, a copy of " Mr. Shelley's Atheistical Poem : 
very scarce." He had never heard of Shelley ; his 
family could tell him little about that social rebel and ex- 
ile ; but deep called unto deep, and Browning could not be 
satisfied until his mother, visiting London, had sent 
him down a parcel of Shelley's books. By a fortunate 
chance, she sent also three volumes of a second un- 
known, John Keats. Often in later life Browning re- 
called the glory of that May evening when these 
wonderful books rolled back the boundaries of his 
world, while two nightingales, in the laburnums and 
copper-beeches, sang in such rivalry as if they had 
been the spirits of the two great poets. 

If these are the chief events of his boyhood, those 
of his youth are even fewer. He was not sent to either 
Oxford or Cambridge, but had private tutors at home, 
where he learned to ride and fence, to box and dance, 
to read French, to know more about music than any 
other English poet, and more about Greek and Italian 
history and literature than almost any other " man of 
the world.'' Man of the world he became, as genuinely 
as he was poet born. Mrs. Bridell-Fox has told how 
Browning, at this period of his life, called on her 
father, and finding him not at home, promptly sat 
down at the piano to play for her. " He was then 
slim and dark, and very handsome, and — may I hint 
it ? — just a trifle of a dandy, addicted to lemon-coloured 



248 Robert Browning 

kid gloves and such things, quite the glass of fashion 
and the mould of form. But full of ' ambition,' eager 
for fame, and what is more, determined to conquer 
fame and to achieve success." In middle age, and 
later, he is described by other writers as strong in the 
shoulder, slender in the waist, " a middle-sized, well 
set up, erect man, with somewhat emphatic gestures, 
and ... a curiously strident voice," — a manly figure, 
thoughtful face, and conventional bearing. This most 
novel and unconventional poet was all his life a con- 
ventional man. He hated all '■ Bohemian " irregu- 
larity, lived as urbanely as other men, took pleasure 
in the forms of social life, and paid his bills as promptly 
as the practical banker, his father. In company, we 
are told, he was in fact taken for some lively financier. 
His mode of life in any man without his gifts — or 
without his famous friends — would have been common- 
place. 

Pauline^ published in 1833, but far more Paracelsus, 
in 1835, won for Browning many of those friends, who, 
themselves admired, became admirers of his genius, or 
lovers of the man himself, or both. Among them were 
Leigh Hunt, John Stuart Mill, the " poor old lion " 
Landor, Thomas Carlyle, with many others. At a 
dinner, where not only Landor was present, but the 
great Wordsworth, their host, Serjeant Talfourd, pro- 
posing " The Poets of England," coupled with the toast 
the name of " Mr. Robert Browning, the author of 
Paracelsus.'' Wordsworth, leaning across the table, 
said — *' I am proud to drink your health, Mr. Brown- 



Introduction 249 

ing." And before the evening was over, the tragic 
actor Macready had made this youngest of the poets 
promise to write him a play. Straffo7'd^ the result of this 
promise, was performed at Covent Garden Theatre on 
May I, 1837. Though the mismanagement of the 
theatre allowed it to run for only a few nights, the play 
was well received and, as Browning wrote afterward, was 
applauded by " a pitful of good-natured people." 

His career as dramatist and poet was now fully begun. 
His published works form so long a list that we can men- 
tion only the more important. After the first three, al- 
ready named, and after Sorde/lo, in 1840, appeared 
Pippa Passes, in 1841 ; King Victor and King Chaides, 
and the Dramatic Lyrics, in 1842 ; The Return oj 
the Druses, and A Blot in the ^Scutcheon, in 1843 5 
Colombe's Birthday, in 1844; Dramatic Romances and 
Lyrics, in 1845 ; and in 1846, Luria and A SouVs Trag- 
edy. All these form parts I to VIH of Bells and Pome- 
granates. To them succeeded Men and Women, 1855 ; 
Dramatis Personce, 1864; The Ring and the Book, 
1868-69 ; Balaustioji's Adventure, and Prince Llohenstiel- 
Schwangau, 187 1 ; Fifine at the Fair, 1872 ; Aristophanes' 
Apology, and The Lnn Album, 1875 ; Pacchiarotto, 
and other Poems, 1876 ; The Agamemnon of ^Fschy- 
lus, i^'j'j ; Dramatic Ldyls, 1879-80 ; Jocoseria, 1883 ; 
Ferishtah's Fancies, 1884 ; and finally Asolando, 1889. 

Throughout these long labours. Browning remained a 
vigorous, wholesome man, interested in many things — 
studying music, learning to paint pictures, making clay 
models and smashing them, analysing criminal cases 



250 Robert Browning 

with all the relish of an amateur detective. Lockhart 
said that he liked Browning because he was not a liter- 
ary man. The vanities and jealousies of little writers 
were not in him ; he admired all kinds of good work, 
remained warm friends with many irritable brothers in 
genius. Though he had the temper of a fighting man, 
attacks on his own works, charges of obscurity and affec- 
tation, did not ruffle him. His attitude toward Sofdel/o 
was characteristic. After Douglas Jerrold, recovering 
from serious illness, had put down the book in defeat 
and dismay, crying — " O God, I a??i an idiot ! " — after 
Carlyle said that his wife had " read through Sor- 
dello without being able to make out whether ' Sor- 
dello ' was a man, or a city, or a book," — in short, after 
it had become humorous or fashionable not to under- 
stand Browning, he maintained the same manly position : 
"I blame nobody, least of all myself, who did my 
best then and since." 

He had long admired the poetry of Miss Elizabeth 
Barrett, a high-spirited, courageous, and already famous 
woman who for many years had been bed-ridden. 
Her father, obstinately believing that she would never 
recover, kept her in a darkened room, to which few 
visitors were admitted ; but through a common friend, 
John Kenyon, her " fairy godfather," the two poets be- 
gan a correspondence which has become famous. In 
1846 they met, in the sick-room. It is a long and beau- 
tiful story, how the prince broke the hedge about this 
Sleeping Princess, and — when her father had forbidden 
her to seek health in Italy — how Browning, the punc- 



Introduction 



2CI 



tilious, conventional man, braved the world's opinion 
to rescue her. They were married quietly in St. Mary- 
lebone Church, on September 12, 1846, and as quietly 
made their way across the continent to Italy. In all 
the history of marriages, perhaps none was ever happier. 
Mrs. Browning was soon restored to health, to sunshine, 
and to brilliant friends. In the spring of 1849, at Flor- 
ence, their son Robert was born. And in Florence, in 
June, 1861, after " a great love had kept her on earth " 
for fifteen years, Mrs. Browning died. The rest of her 
husband's life is summed up in his brave sentence — 
'' I mean to keep writing, whether I like it or not." 

Browning died at Venice, on December 12, 1889. 
He was buried in the Poet's Corner of Westminster 
Abbey. 

II. Poems 

Of Robert Browning's poetry it is possible that you 
have read little or nothing ; but it is hardly possible, 
in such a case, that you have not heard more than one 
joke, good or bad, laughable or stupid, on the subject 
of his obscurity. These jokes have become hackneyed, 
yet perhaps they still tend to make persons who have 
not read Browning think him hard to understand. In 
his longer poems he is, indeed, anything but clear. 
Tennyson, after reading SordeHo, said the opening line 
of the poem. — 

" Who will, may hear Sordello's story told, " 
and the closing, — 

" Who would, has heard Sordello's story told, " 



252 Robert Browning 

were the only lines he understood, and they were both 
lies. You, however, will have no call to read Sordello 
or any other long, perplexing poem, — it may be for 
years, and it may be forever. Should you find any 
given page obscure, at sight, the printed lines will be- 
come clearer as you read them aloud, because Browning, 
when he wrote, followed the order of spoken English 
rather than of written English. He has, moreover, 
many short poems, full of great beauty and meaning, in 
which neither beauty nor meaning should escape you 
if you will remember one simple and important fact. 

This fact is, that Browning wrote the greater part of 
his verses, whether songs or stories, in a fashion wholly 
different from the fashion of his companion poets. 
The difference you will quickly see : except in compara- 
tively rare instances, he does not speak to you directly 
out of his own heart, like Wordsworth, or Byron, or 
Shelley, or Keats, but indirectly out of the heart and 
from the lips of some real or imagined character. 
Browning is, in other words, a dramatic poet. 

This does not mean that he is both poet and drama- 
tist, as Shakespeare was. Though many persons have 
admired Browning's plays, you will discover, when you 
come to them later, that those plays lack some quality 
which audiences demand in the theatre. At all events, 
you will agree that Browning is not first and foremost a 
playwright, and yet that he is supreme in one province 
of the playwright's art, — a province which he annexed 
to the kingdom of poetry. He himself called certain of 
his poems " Dramatic Lyrics " and " Dramatic Idyls." 



Introduction 



53 



These form a class of poetry so new in Browning's 
time, so characteristic of his genius, and so much his 
favourite way of writing, that we ahvays think of them as 
his own undisputed invention. Some, though not all, 
of his pieces in this book are dramatic lyrics or episodes, 
and will show you, briefly yet clearly, what Browning 
was fondest of writing and how he set about to write. 

The poems which are not of this sort will easily ex- 
plain themselves. The Cavalier Tunes are, as you will 
see, rousing songs roared out lustily by " great-hearted 
gentlemen," who have sat down with right English ap- 
petites to a table where the pasty is good and the wine 
plentiful, or who have jumped up in high spirits at the 
call of " Boots and Saddles, " to ride out for Church and 
King. Home-Thoughts^ from Abroad shows not only the 
longing of an exile, among the gaudy melon-flowers of 
Italy, for the sights and sounds of April in England, but 
also a keen eye for the little processes of Nature which 
make beautiful such fields and hedges as a man might 
see in any week-day ramble. 

In Home-Thoughts^ from the Sea, Browning recalls with 
gorgeous colour and triumphant tone, the places of vic- 
tory, Gibraltar, Cadiz Bay, Trafalgar, — where England 
has taught him the proud lesson and service of patriot- 
ism. In both of these poems, he speaks with his own 
voice ; as also in The Lost Leader, where he cries out, 
in both sorrow and indignation, not against a single 
deserter from a single cause, but against all deserters 
from all good causes. With his own voice, too, he nar- 
rates the smiling, mortal heroism of the young soldier 



254 Robert Browning 

whose death was but an Incident of the F?'ench Camp ; 
and in more deliberate lines tells of The Boy and the 
Angel, who changed places in order to prove that God 
demands praise from all His creatures, and rejoices no 
less in a poor workman's song at his bench than in 
" the Pope's great way" of praise. 

The remaining pieces here set before you illus- 
trate, in various manner and degree, Browning's 
dramatic habit. Herve Riel is, to be sure, told by the 
poet, not by his spokesman ; it begins in a narrative 
vein, and ends with an epilogue or commentary; but 
the scene of the episode is definitely and vividly kept 
on the deck of Damfreville's ship, the Formidable, 
where we see the brave and ready pilot at his work, 
we hear him laugh, and answer boldly, and holla 
" Anchor ! ", just as we hear his dialogue with Dam- 
freville, and the cheers that rise under the ramparts of 
Solidor. Neither scene nor action is anything but 
dramatic. The poet's order is obeyed : — 

*' In my verse, Herve Riel, do thou once more 
Save the squadron, honour France, love thy wife the Belle 
Aurore ! " 

In Evelyn Hope — though the poem is meditative 
and, as it were, silent — the first stanza discloses the 
scene as if for a play : — 

" Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead ! 

Sit and watch by her side an hour. 
That is her book-shelf, this her bed ; 

She plucked that piece of geranium-flower, 



Introduction 255 

Beginning to die, too, in the glass; 

Little has yet been changed, I think : 
The shutters are shut, no light may pass 

Save two long rays, thro' the hinge's chink." 

And though the following stanzas contain no action, 
they unfold the soliloquy of the principal actor who sits 
watching, and bends at last to shut the geranium leaf 
inside the dead girl's hand. 

How They h'ought the Good News is confined, of 
course, to no single scene, but moves with fiery swift- 
ness through league after league. It has been called a 
ballad of brave horses. Yet even here, as we gallop 
with Dirck and Joris through the night, the sunrise, and 
the glaring day, we have taken the place of' the third, 
nameless hero, swung into his saddle, and galloped 
onward in all his exhilaration and impatience. We our- 
selves shove the hero aside — as Stevenson has finely 
said — to bathe in fresh experience. We see how — 

" At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun, 
And against him the cattle stood black every one, 
To stare through the mist at us galloping past." 

The stirring ride is, after all, a narrative, but it 
starts with a rush that leaves us no time to question or 
to catch breath ; w^e spring to the stirrup in the first 
line, and gallop till Roland halts in Aix. 

Pheidippides^ with an opening not so abrupt, is the 
one poem which may leave you puzzled until the action 
has begun, and perhaps after. Here, more than in 
any of the foregoing pieces, you must remember the 
one simple, important fact of which we spoke, — that 



2^6 Robert Browning 

Browning is a lyrical dramatist. Here, more than ever, 
you must ask yourselves who it is that speaks. In his 
opening lines Browning is like an actor who appears in 
many disguises. This story of the glorious race from 
Athens to Sparta, from Marathon to the Acropolis, is 
told (at the outset, and nearly to the end) by the runner 
himself, — the exultant young Pheidippides, returning 
to hail the land which he saved by his speed. The 
beauties of the poem you are in no danger of over- 
looking. Of heroic temper, it runs and races as though 
with the feathered ankles of Mercury. It is " a field 
which the fire runs through." 

One Word More, the beautiful lines in which Brown- 
ing devotes himself and his whole achievement to his 
wife, will show you better than any words of prose in 
what mode he loved to practise his art. In the fif- 
teenth stanza he says : — 

" Love, you saw me gather men and women, 
Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy, 
Enter each and all, and use their service, 
Speak from every mouth, — the speech, a poem. 
Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows, 
Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving : 
I am mine and yours — the rest be all men's, 
Karshish, Cleon, Norbert, and the fifty." 

The moral, the doctrine of brave glad optimism which 
Browning everywhere enforces, you will in later read- 
ing piece together from many poems, and find 
yourselves the better for. A highly complex poet, 
Browning held a simple creed. In Hen^e Riel and in a 



Introduction 257 

score of other pieces, he chose for his heroes no great 
shining figures, splendidly rewarded. The pilot, an 
obscure, plain man, gained only the cheers aboard 
ship and a day ashore to see his wife. His feat was 
not set off to the world or trumpeted abroad. Success, 
to Browning, never means riches, or fame, or even the 
fulfilment of a man's or a woman's purpose in life. 
Defeat, to him, was not by any means failure. The 
human spirit, he tells us again and again, may still be 
unconquerable even in disaster, when all the odds of 
life and fate are dead against us, as were those grim 
watchers on the hills who mocked Childe Roland at the 
Dark Tower. The success, the reward in such a des- 
perate pass, is the knowledge that we can do our best 
proudly, as Childe Roland blew the last challenge on 
his slug-horn. The wisdom of Browning is not the 
wisdom of this world. Like Ecclesiastes, he might 
say: — 

"This wisdom have I seen under the sun, and it seemed great 
unto me : 

" There was a little city, and few men within it ; and there came 
a great king against it, and built great bulwarks against it. 

" Now there was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his wis- 
dom delivered the city ; yet no man remembered that same poor 
man. 

"Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength, nevertheless the 
poor man's wisdom is despised and his words are not heard. 

" The words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry 
of him that ruleth among fools." 

The moral and the motive of this Biblical story 
might be those of almost any dramatic episode in 

SELECTIONS — 1 7 



258 Robert Browning 

Browning. To him, glory and honour lie with the man 
who has done good work, and with that man only. 
The world may be full of errors and defeats and mis- 
judgments. But Browning, nobly audacious, declares 
that " God's in his Heaven, All's right with the world ! " 
Old age, the great probability of failure, death at last, 
wait for us in that world ; but meanwhile this coura- 
geous poet would have us — 

" Strive, and hold cheap the strain, 

Learn, nor account the pang, 

Dare, never grudge the throe." 



III. Bibliographical Note 

Texts. — Poetical Works, Cambridge edition; Poetical 
Works (Macmillan, 1896). 

Biography and Criticism. — Life, by W. Sharp (Great 
Writers) ; by G. K. Chesterton (EngHsh Men of Letters) ; 
An Introduction to the Study of Browning, by A. Symons ; 
Handbook to Works of Browning, by Mrs. Sutherland Orr ; 
Essays, by E. Dowden {Studies in Literature^ ; by J. J. 
Chapman {Enierson and Other Essays) ; by R. H. Hutton 
{Literary Essays, and Essays Theological and Literary). 



SELECTIONS FROM BROWNING 

PAGE 

Cavalier Tunes 261 

Incident of the French Camp 264 

The Lost Leader 266 

" How they brought the Good News from Ghent to 

Aix" 267 

Evelyn Hope 271 

Home-Thoughts, from Abroad 273 

Home-Thoughts, from the Sea 274 

The Boy and the Angel 275 

One Word More 278 

Herve Riel 287 

Pheidippides 294 

My Last Duchess 302 

Up at a Villa — Down in the City .... 304 



259 



SELECTIONS FROM BROWNING 

I 

Cavalier Tunes 

I 

MARCHING ALONG 



Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King, 

Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing : 

And, pressing a troop unable to stoop 

And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop, 

Marched them along, fifty-score strong. 

Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. 



God for King Charles ! Pym and such carles 

To the Devil that prompts 'em their treasonous paries 

Cavaliers, up ! Lips from the cup. 

Hands from the pasty, nor bite take nor sup k 

Till you're — 

{Chorus) Marching along^ffty- score strongs 

Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song. 
261 



262 Robert Browning 

III 

Hampden to hell, and his obsequies' knell 

Serve Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Harry as well ! 15 

England, good cheer ! Rupert is near ! 

Kentish and loyalists, keep we not here, 

{Chorus) Marching along, Jifty-sco7-e stro?ig, 

Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this so7ig? 

IV 

Then, God for King Charles ! Pym and his snarls 20 
To the Devil that pricks on such pestilent carles ! 
Hold by the right, you double your might ; 
So, onward to Nottingham, fresh for the fight, 

(Chorus) March we along, fifty-score strong, 24 

Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song I 



GIVE A ROUSE 

I 

King Charles, and who'll do him right now ? 
King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now? 
Give a rouse : here's, in hell's despite now, 
King Charles ! 



Who gave me the goods that went since ? 30 

Who raised me the house that sank once ? 



Selected Poems 263 

Who helped me to gold I spent since ? 

Who found me in wine you drank once ? 

{Chorus) King Charles^ and who'll do him right nozv / 
King Charles, and who's ripe for Jight now ? 35 
'Give a rouse : here^s, in helVs despite 7iow, 
King Charles / 

III 

To whom used my boy George quaff else, 

By the" old fool's side that begot him ? 

For whom did he cheer and laugh else, 40 

While Noll's damned troopers shot him ? 

(Chorus') King Charles, and who'll do him right ?iow 1 
King Charles, and who's ripe for fight now J 
Give a rouse : here's, in hell's despite 7107a, 
King Charles / 45 

3 

BOOT AND SADDLE 
I 

Boot, saddle, to horse, and away ! 
Rescue my castle before the hot day 
Brightens to blue from its silvery gray, 

{Chorus) Boot, saddle, to horse and away I 

II 
Ride past the suburbs, asleep as you'd say ; 50 

Many's the friend there, will listen and pray 
"God's luck to gallants that strike up the lay — 

(Chorus) " Boot, saddle, to horse, and away /" 



264 Robert Browning 



III 



Forty miles off, like a roebuck at bay, 

Flouts Castle Brancepeth the Roundheads^ array ; 55 

Who laughs, " Good fellows ere this, by my fay, ^ 

(Chorus) '' Boot, saddle, to horse , and away ! " 

IV 

Who ? My wife Gertrude ; that, honest and gay, 
Laughs when you talk of surrendering, " Nay ! 
I've better counsellors ; what counsel they ? 60 

{Chorus^ " Boot, saddle, to horse, and away I " 

II 

Incident of the French Camp 
I 

You know, we French stormed Ratisbon : 

A mile or so away. 
On a little mound, Napoleon 

Stood on our storming-day ; 65 

With neck out-thrust, you fancy how, 

Legs wide, arms locked behind, 
As if to balance the prone brow 

Oppressive with its mind. 



Just as perhaps he mused " My plans 70 

That soar, to earth may fall, 
1 Faith. 



Selected Poems 265 

Let once my army-leader Lannes 

Waver at yonder wall," — 
Out 'twixt the battery-smokes there flew 

A rider, bound on bound 75 

Full-galloping ; nor bridle drew 

Until he reached the mound. 

Ill 

Then off there flung in smiling joy, 

And held himself erect 
By just his horse's mane, a boy: 80 

You hardly could suspect — 
(So tight he kept his lips compressed, 

Scarce any blood came through) 
You looked twice ere you saw his breast 

Was all but shot in two. 85 

IV 

*' Well," cried he, '' Emperor, by God's grace 

We've got you Ratisbon ! 
The Marshal's in the market-place, 

And you'll be there anon 
To see your flag-bird flap his vans 90 

Where I, to heart's desire, 
Perched him ! " The chief's eye flashed ; his plans 

Soared up again like fire. 



The chief's eye flashed ; but presently 

Softened itself, as sheathes 95 



266 Robert Browning 

A film the mother-eagle's eye 

When her bruised eaglet breathes ; 

'' You're wounded ! " " Nay," the soldier's pride 
Touched to the quick, he said : 

" I'm killed, Sire !" And his chief beside, loo 

Smiling the boy fell dead. 



Ill 
The Lost Leader 



Just for a handful of silver he left us, 

Just for a riband to stick in his coat — 
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us. 

Lost all the others she lets us devote ; 105 

They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver. 

So much was theirs who so little allowed : 
How all our copper had gone for his service ! 

Rags — were they purple, his heart had been proud ! 
We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him, 

Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, m 

Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, 

Made him our pattern to live and to die ! 
Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, 

Burns, Shelley, were with us, — they watch from their 
graves ! 115 

He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, 

— He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves ! 



Selected Poems 267 



We shall march prospering, — not through his presence ; 

Songs may inspirit us, — not from his lyre ; 
Deeds will be done, — while he boasts his quiescence, 

Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire : 121 
Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, 

One task more declined, one more footpath untrod. 
One more devils'-triumph and sorrow for angels, 

One wrong more tQ man, one more insult to God ! 125 
Life's night begins : let him never come back to us ! 

There would be doubt, hesitation and pain. 
Forced praise on our part — the glimmer of twilight, 

Never glad confident morning again ! 
Best fight on well, for we taught him — strike gallantly. 

Menace our heart ere we master his own ; 131 

Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us, 

Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne ! 

IV 

"How THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NeWS FROM 

Ghent to Aix " 



I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he ; 
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three ; 135 
"Good speed! " cried the watch, as the gate-bolts un- 
drew ; 
'^ Speed ! " echoed the wall to us gallopmg through ; 



268 Robert Browning 

Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, 
And into the midnight we galloped abreast. 

II 

Not a word to each other ; we kept the great pace 140 
Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing our place ; 
I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight, 
Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique ^ right, 
Rebuckled the cheek-strap, chained slacker the bit, 
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit. 145 

III 

'Twas moonset at starting ; but while we drew near 
Lokeren, the cocks crew and twilight dawned clear ; 
At Boom, a great yellow star came out to see ; 
At Diiffeld, 'twas morning as plain as could be ; 
And from Mecheln church-steeple we heard the half- 
chime, 150 
So Joris broke silence with, " Yet there is time ! " 

IV 

At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun. 
And against him the cattle stood black every one. 
To stare thro' the mist at us galloping past. 
And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last, 155 

With resolute shoulders, each butting away 
The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray : 
1 The pommel of the saddle. 



Selected Poems 269 



And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear bent 

back 
For my voice, and the other pricked out on his track ; 
And one eye's black intelligence, — ever that glance 160 
O'er its white edge at me, his own master, askance! 
And the thick heavy spume-flakes which aye and anon 
His fierce lips shook upwards in galloping on. 

VI 

By Hasselt, Dirck groaned ; and cried Joris, " Stay spur ! 
Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her, 165 
We'll remember at Aix " — for one heard the quick 

wheeze 
Of her chest, saw the stretched neck and staggering 

knees. 
And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank. 
As down on her haunches she shuddered and sank. 



VII 

So, we were left galloping, Joris and I, 170 

Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky ; 
The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, 
'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like 

chaif ; 
Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white, 
And " Gallop," gasped Joris, '' for Aix is in sight ! " 175 



270 Robert Browning 



VIII 

•' How they'll greet us ! " — and all in a moment his 

roan 
Rolled neck and croup over, lay dead as a stone ; 
And there was my Roland to bear the whole weight 
Of the news which alone could save Aix from her fate, 
With his nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim, 180 
And with circles of red for his eye-sockets' rim. 



IX 

Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster let fall, 
Shook off both my jack-boots, let go belt and all, 
Stood up in the stirrup, leaned, patted his ear, 
Called my Roland his pet-name, my horse without peer ; 
Clapped my hands, laughed and sang, any noise, bad or 
good, 186 

Till at length into Aix Roland galloped and stood. 



And all I remember is, — friends flocking round 
As I sat with his head 'twixt my knees on the ground; 
And no voice but was praising this Roland of mine, 190 
As I poured down his throat our last measure of wine,. 
Which (the burgesses voted by common' consent) 
Was no more than his due who brought good news from 
Ghent. 



Selected Poems 271 

V 

Evelyn Hope 

I 

Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead ! 

Sit and watch by her side an hour. 195 

That is her book-shelf, this her bed ; 

She plucked that piece of geranium-flower, 
Beginning to die, too, in the glass ; 

Little has yet been changed, I think : 
The shutters are shut, no light may pass 200 

Save two long rays thro' the hinge's chink. 



Sixteen years old when she died ! 

Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name : 
It was not her time to love ; beside, 

Her life had many a hope and aim, 205 

Duties enough and little cares. 

And now was quiet, now astir, 
Till God's hand beckoned unawares, — 

And the sweet white brow is all of her. 

Ill 

Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope? 210 

What, your soul was pure and true, 
The good stars met in your horoscope, 

Made you of spirit, fire and dew — 



272 Robert Browning 

And, just because I was thrice as old 

And our paths in the world diverged so wide, 215 
Each was naught to each, must I be told ? 

We were fellow mortals, naught beside ? 

IV 

No, indeed ! for God above 

Is great to grant, as mighty to make, 
And creates the love to reward the love : 220 

I claim you still, for my own love's sake ! 
Delayed it may be for more lives yet. 

Through worlds I shall traverse, not a few : 
Much is to learn, much to forget 

Ere the time be come for taking you. 225 



But the time will come, at last it will, 

When, Evelyn Hope, what meant (I shall say) 
In the lower earth, in the years long still. 

That body and soul so pure and gay ? 
Why your hair was amber, I shall divine, 230 

And your mouth of your own geranium's red — 
And what you would do with me, in fine, 

In the new life come in the old one's stead. 

VI 

I have lived (I shall say) so much since then, 

Given up myself so many times, 235 

Gained me the gains of various men. 
Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes ; 



Selected Poems 273 

Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope. 

Either I missed or itself missed me : 
And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope ! 240 

What is the issue ? let us see ! 

VII 

I loved you, Evelyn, all the while ! 

My heart seemed full as it could hold ; 
There was place and to spare for the frank young 
smile. 

And the red young mouth, and the hair's young 
gold. 245 

So, hush, — I will give you this leaf to keep : 

See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand ! 
There, that is our secret : go to sleep ! 

You will wake, and remember, and understand. 



VI 

Home-Thoughts, from Abroad 

Oh, to be in England now that April's there, 250 

And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, 

unaware. 
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf 
Round the elm tree bole ^ are in tiny leaf, 
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough 
In England — now ! 255 

1 Trunk, 

SELECTIONS — 1 8 



274 Robert Browning 

And after April, when May follows 

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows ! 

Hark, where my blossomed pear tree in the hedge 

Leans to the field and scatters on the clover 259 

Blossoms and dewdrops — at the bent spray's edge — 

That's the wise thrush : he sings each song twice over 

Lest you should think he never could recapture 

The first fine careless rapture ! 

And, though the fields look rough with hoary dew, 

All will be gay when noontide wakes anew 265 

The buttercups, the little children's dower 

— Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower ! 



VII 

Home-Thoughts, from the Sea 

Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the Northwest died 

away ; 
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz 

Bay; 
Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar 

lay ; 270 

In the dimmest Northeast distance dawned Gibraltar 

grand and gray ; 
" Here and here did England help me : how can I help 

England ? " — say. 
Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise 

and pray, 
While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa. 



Selected Poems 275 

VIII 

The Boy and the Angel 

Morning, evening, noon and night 275 

*' Praise God ! " sang Theocrite. 

Then to his poor trade he turned, 
Whereby the daily meal was earned. 

Hard he laboured, long and well ; 

O'er his work the boy's curls fell. 280 

But ever, at each period, 

He stopped and sang, " Praise God ! " 

Then back again his curls he threw, 
And cheerful turned to work anew. 

Said Blaise, the listening monk, " Well done ; 285 
I doubt not thou art heard, my son : 

" As well as if thy voice to-day 

Were praising God, the Pope's great way. 

" This Easter Day, the Pope at Rome 

Praises God from Peter's dome." 290 

Said Theocrite, " Would God that I 

Might praise Him, that great way, and die ! " 

Night passed, day shone, 
And Theocrite was gone. 



276 Robert Browning 

With God a day endures alway, 295 

A thousand years are but a day. 

God said in heaven, " Nor day nor night 
Now brings the voice of my delight." 

Then Gabriel, like a rainbow's birth, 

Spread his wings and sank to earth ; 300 

Entered, in flesh, the empty cell, 

Lived there, and played the craftsman well ; 

And morning, evening, noon and night, 
Praised God in place of Theocrite. 

And from a boy, to youth he grew : 305 

The man put off the stripling's hue : 

The man matured and fell away 
Into the season of decay : 

And ever o'er the trade he bent, 

And ever lived on earth content. 310 

(He did God's will ; to him, all one 
If on the earth or in the sun.) 

God said, '' A praise is in mine ear ; 
There is no doubt in it, no fear : 

" So sing old worlds, and so 315 

New worlds that from my footstool go. 



Selected Poems 277 

" Clearer loves sound other ways : 
I miss my little human praise." 

Then forth sprang Gabriel's wings, off fell 
The flesh disguise, remained the cell. 320 

'Twas Easter Day : he flew to Rome, 
And paused above Saint Peter's dome. 

In the tiring-room close by 
The great outer gallery, 

With his holy vestments dight,^ 325 

Stood the new Pope, Theocrite : 

And all his past career 
Came back upon him clear, 

Since when, a boy, he plied his trade, 

Till on his life the sickness weighed ; 330 

And in his cell, when death drew near, 
An angel in a dream brought cheer : 

And rising from the sickness drear. 
He grew a priest, and now stood here. 

To the East with praise he turned, 335 

And on his sight the angel burned. 

" I bore thee from thy craftsman's cell, 
And set thee here ; I did not well. 

1 Clothed. 



278 Robert Browning 

'* Vainly I left my angel-sphere, 

Vain was thy dream of many a year. 340 

'' Thy voice's praise seemed weak ; it dropped — 
Creation's chorus stopped ! 

*' Go back and praise again 
The early way, while I remain. 

" With that weak voice of our disdain, 345 

Take up creation's pausing strain. 

Back to the cell and poor employ : 
Resume the craftsman and the boy !" 

Theocrite grew old at home ; 

A new Pope dwelt in Peter's dome. 350 

One vanished as the other died : 
They sought God side by side. 



IX 

One Word More 



There they are, my fifty men and women 

Naming me the fifty poems finished ! 

Take them, Love, the book and me together ; 355 

Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also. 



Selected Poems 279 

II 

Rafael made a century ^ of sonnets, 

Made and wrote them in a certain volume 

Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil 

Else he only used to draw Madonnas : 360 

These, the world might view — but one, the volume. 

Who that one, you ask ? Your heart instructs you. 

Did she live and love it all her lifetime ? 

Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets, 

Die, and let it drop beside her pillow 365 

Where it lay in place of Rafael's glory, 

Rafael's cheek so duteous and so loving — 

Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter's, 

Rafael's cheek, her love had turned a poet's ? 

Ill 

You and I would rather read that volume, 370 

(Taken to his beating bosom by it) 

Lean and list the bosom-beats of Rafael, 

Would we not ? than wonder at Madonnas — 

Her, San Sisto names, and Her, Foligno, 

Her, that visits Florence in a vision, 375 

Her, that's left with lilies in the Louvre — 

Seen by us and all the world in circle. 

IV 

You and I will never read that volume. 
Guido Reni, like his own eye's apple 

1 Hundred. 



28o Robert Browning 

Guarded long the treasure-book and loved it. 380 

Guido Reni dying, all Bologna 

Cried, and the world cried too, " Ours, the treasure ! " 
Suddenly, as rare things will, it vanished. 



Dante once prepared to paint an angel : 

Whom to please ? You whisper " Beatrice." 3S5 

While he mused and traced it and retraced it, 

(Peradventure with a pen corroded 

Still by drops of that hot ink he dipped for. 

When, his left-hand i' the hair o' the wicked. 

Back he held the brow and pricked its stigma, 390 

Bit into the live man's flesh for parchment. 

Loosed him, laughed to see the writing rankle, 

Let the wretch go festering through Florence) — 

Dante, who loved well because he hated. 

Hated wickedness that hinders loving, 395 

Dante standing, studying his angel, — 

In there broke the folk of his Inferno. 

Says he — " Certain people of importance " 

(Such he gave his daily dreadful line to) 

" Entered and would seize, forsooth, the poet." 400 

Says the poet — " Then I stopped my painting." 

VI 

You and I would rather see that angel, 
Painted by the tenderness of Dante, 
Would we not ? — than read a fresh Inferno. 



Selected Poems 281 



VII 

You and I will never see that picture. 405 

While he mused on love and Beatrice, 

While he softened o'er his outlined angel, 

In they broke, those " people of importance : " 

We and Bice ^ bear the loss for ever. 

VIII 

What of Rafael's sonnets, Dante's picture ? 410 

This : no artist lives and loves, that longs not 

Once, and only once, and for one only, 

(Ah, the prize !) to find his love a language 

Fit and fair and simple and sufficient — 

Using nature that's an art to others, 415 

Not, this one time, art that's turned his nature. 

Ay, of all the artists living, loving. 

None but would forego his proper dowry, — 

Does he paint? he fain would write a poem, — 

Does he write ? he fain would paint a picture, 420 

Put to proof art alien to the artist's, 

Once, and only once, and for one only. 

So to be the man and leave the artist. 

Gain the man's joy, miss the artist's sorrow. 

IX 

Wherefore? Heaven's gift takes earth's abatement ! 425 
He who smites the rock and spreads the water, 

1 Beatrice. 



282 Robert Browning 

Bidding drink and live a crowd beneath him, 

Even he, the minute makes immortal, 

Proves, perchance, but mortal in the minute, 

Desecrates, belike, the deed in doing. 430 

While he smites, how can he but remember, 

So he smote before, in such a peril, 

When they stood and mocked — "Shall smiting help 

us?" 
When they drank and sneered — '* A stroke is easy ! " 
When they wiped their mouths and went their journey, 
Throwing him for thanks — "But drought was pleas- 
ant." 436 
Thus old memories mar the actual triumph ; 
Thus the doing savours of disrehsh ; 
Thus achievement lacks a gracious somewhat ; 
O'er-importuned brows becloud the mandate, 440 
Carelessness or consciousness, the gesture. 
For he bears an ancient wrong aboiit him, 
Sees and knows again those phalanxed faces, 
Hears, yet one time more, the 'customed prelude — 
" How shouldst thou, of all men, smite, and save us? " 
Guesses what is like to prove the sequel — 446 
" Egypt's flesh-pots — nay, the drought was better." 



Oh, the crowd must have emphatic warrant ! 
Theirs, the Sinai-forehead's cloven brilliance, 
Right-arm's rod-sweep, tongue's imperial fiat. 450 

Never dares the man put off the prophet. 






Selected Poems 283 

XI 

Did he love one face from out the thousands, 

(Were she Jethro's daughter, white and wifely, 

Were she but the Ethiopian bondslave,) 

He would envy yon dumb patient camel, 455 

Keeping a reserve of scanty water 

Meant to save his own life in the desert ; 

Ready in the desert to deliver 

(Kneeling down to let his breast be opened) 

Hoard and life together for his mistress. 460 

XII 

I shall never, in the years remaining, 

Paint you pictures, no, nor carve you statues, 

Make you music that should all-express me ; 

So it seems : I stand on my attainment. 

This of verse alone, one life allows me ; 465 

Verse and nothing else have I to give you. 

Other heights in other lives, God willing : 

All the gifts from all the heights, your own, Love ! 

XIII 

Yet a semblance of resource avails us — 

Shade so finely touched, love's sense must seize it. 470 

Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly. 

Lines I write the first time and the last time. 

He who works in fresco, steals a hair-brush. 

Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly. 



284 Robert Browning 

Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little, 475 

Makes a strange art of an art familiar, 

Fills his lady's missal-marge ^ with flowerets. 

He who blows through bronze, may breathe through 

silver. 
Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess. 
He who writes, may write for once as I do. 4S0 

XIV 

Love, you saw me gather men and women, 

Live or dead or fashioned by my fancy, 

Enter each and all, and use their service. 

Speak from every mouth, — the speech, a poem. 

Hardly shall I tell my joys and sorrows, 485 

Hopes and fears, belief and disbelieving : 

I am mine and yours — the rest be all men's, 

Karshish, Cleon, Norbert, and the fifty. 

Let me speak this once in my true person, 

Not as Lippo, Roland, or Andrea, 490 

Though the fruit of speech be just this sentence : 

Pray you, look on these my men and women. 

Take and keep my fifty poems finished ; 

Where my heart lies, let my brain lie also ! 

Poor the speech ; be how I speak, for all things. 495 

XV 

Not but that you know me ! Lo, the moon's self ! 
Here in London, yonder late in Florence, 

1 Margin of a prayer-book. 



Selected Poems 285 

Still we find her face, the thrice-transfigured. 

Curving on a sky imbrued with colour, 

Drifted over Fiesole by twilight, 500 

Came she, our new crescent of a hair's-breadth. 

Full she flared it, lamping Samminiato, 

Rounder 'twixt the cypresses and rounder, 

Perfect till the nightingales applauded. 

Now, a piece of her old self, impoverished, 505 

Hard to greet, she traverses the house-roofs, 

Hurries with unhandsome thrift of silver, 

Goes dispiritedly, glad to finish. 



XVI 

What, there's nothing in the moon noteworthy ? 

Nay : for if that moon could love a mortal, 510 

Use, to charm him (so to fit a fancy), 

All her magic ('tis the old sweet mythos). 

She would turn a new side to her mortal. 

Side unseen of herdsman, huntsman, steersman — 

Blank to Zoroaster on his terrace, 515 

Blind to Galileo on his turret. 

Dumb to Homer, dumb to Keats — him, even ! 

Think, the wonder of the moonstruck mortal — 

When she turns round, comes again in heaven. 

Opens out anew for worse or better ! 520 

Proves she hke some portent of an iceberg 

Swimming full upon the ship it founders. 

Hungry with huge teeth of splintered crystals ? 

Proves she as the paved work of a sapphire 



2 86 Robert Brow 



ning 



Seen by Moses when he climbed the mountain? 525 

Moses, Aaron, Nadab and Abihu 

CHmbed and saw the very God, the Highest, 

Stand upon the paved work of a sapphire. 

Like the bodied heaven in his clearness 

Shone the stone, the sapphire of that paved work, 530 

When they ate and drank and saw God also ! 

XVII 

What were seen ? None knows, none ever shall know. 
Only this is sure — the sight were other, 
Not the moon's same side, born late in Florence, 
Dying now impoverished here in London. 535 

God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures 
Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with, 
One to show a woman when he loves her ! 

XVIII 

This I say of me, but think of you. Love ! 

This to you — yourself my moon of poets ! 540 

Ah, but that's the world's side — there's the wonder. 

Thus they see you, praise you, think they know you ! 

There, in turn I stand with them and praise you — 

Out of my own self, I dare to phrase it. 

But the best is when I glide from out them, 545 

Cross a step or two of dubious twilight. 

Come out on the other side, the novel 

Silent silver lights and darks undreamed of, 

Where I hush and bless myself with silence. 



Selected Poems 287 

XIX 

Oh, their Rafael of the dear Madonnas, 550 

Oh, their Dante .of the dread Inferno, 
Wrote one song — and in my brain I sing it, 
Drew one angel — borne, see, on my bosom ! 

X 

Herve Riel 

On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred ninety- 
two, 
Did the EngHsh fight the French — woe to France ! 

And, the thirty-first of May, helter-skelter through the 
blue, 556 

Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of sharks 
pursue, 
Came crowding ship on ship to St. Malo on the 
Ranee, 

With the English fleet in view. 



'Twas the squadron that escaped, with the victor in 
full chase ; 560 

First and foremost of the drove, in his great ship, 
Damfreville ; 
Close on him fled, great and small. 
Twenty-two good ships in all ; 
And they signalled to the place 
'' Help the winners of a race ! 565 



288 Robert Brownin 



g 



Get us guidance, give us harbour, take us quick — 

or, quicker still. 
Here's the English can and will 1 " 

III 

Then the pilots of the place put out brisk and leapt on 
board ; 
" Why, what hope or chance have ships like these to 
pass?" laughed they: 
" Rocks to starboard, rocks to port, all the passage 
scarred and scored, 570 

Shall the ' Fo7'midable ' here with her twelve and eighty 
guns 
Think to make the river-mouth by the single narrow 
way, 
Trust to enter where 'tis ticklish for a craft of twenty 
tons, 
And with flow at full beside ? 

Now 'tis slackest ebb of tide. 575 

Reach the mooring? Rather say, 
While rock stands or water runs, 
Not a ship will leave the bay ! " 

IV 

Then was called a council straight. 

Brief and bitter the debate : 580 

" Here's the English at our heels ; would you have 

them take in tow 
All that's left us of the fleet, linked together stern and 

bow, 



Selected Poems 289 

For a prize to Plymouth Sound ? 
Better run the ships aground ! " 

(Ended Damfreville his speech). 585 

" Not a minute more to wait ! 

Let the Captains all and each 

Shove ashore, then blow up, burn the vessels on the 
beach ! 
France must undergo her fate. 



" Give the word ! " But no such word 590 

Was ever spoke or heard ; 

For up stood, for out stepped, for in struck amid all 
these 
— A Captain? A Lieutenant? A Mate — first, sec- 
ond, third ? 
No such man of mark, and meet 
With his betters to compete ! 595 

But a simple Breton sailor pressed by Tourville for 
the fleet, 
A poor coasting-pilot he, Herve Riel the Croisickese. 

VI 

And, "What mockery or malice have we here?" cries 

Herve Riel : 
"Are you mad, you Malouins? Are you cowards, 

fools, or rogues ? 
Talk to me of rocks and shoals, me who took the 

soundings, tell 600 

SELECTIONS — 1 9 



290 Robert Browning 

On my fingers every bank, every shallow, every swell 
'Twixt the offing here and Greve where the river 
disembogues ? ^ 
Are you bought by English gold ? Is it love the lying's 
for? 
Morn and eve, night and day, 

Have I piloted your bay, 605 

Entered free and anchored fast at the foot of Solidor. 
Burn the fleet and ruin France ? That were worse 
than fifty Hogues ! 
Sirs, they know I speak the truth ! Sirs, believe 
me there's a way ! 
Only let me lead the hne, 

Have the biggest ship to steer, 610 

Get this ' Formidable ' clear. 
Make the others follow mine, 

And I lead them, most and least, by a passage I know 
well. 
Right to Solidor past Greve, 

And there lay them safe and sound ; 615 

And if one ship misbehave, 

— Keel so much as grate the ground, 
Why, I've nothing but my life, — here's my head!" 
cries Herve Riel. 

VII 

Not a minute more to wait. 

" Steer us in, then, small and great ! 620 

1 Pours out at the mouth. 



Selected Poems 291 

Take the helm, lead the line, save the squadron ! " 
cried its chief. 
Captains, give the sailor place ! 

He is Admiral, in brief. 
Still the north-wind, by God's grace ! 
See the noble fellow's face 625 

As the big ship, with a bound. 
Clears the entry like a hound. 

Keeps the passage as its inch of way were the wide 
sea's profound ! 

See, safe through shoal and rock, 

How they follow in a flock, 630 

Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that grates the 
ground. 

Not a spar that comes to grief ! 
The peril, see, is past. 
All are harboured to the last. 

And just as Herv6 Riel hollas *' Anchor ! " — sure as 
fate 635 

Up the English come — too late ! 



VIII 

So, the storm subsides to calm : 

They see the green trees wave 

On the heights o'erlooking Greve. 
Hearts that bled are stanched with balm. 640 

"Just our rapture to enhance, 

Let the English rake the bay, 



292 Robert Browning 

Gnash their teeth and glare askance 

As they cannonade away ! 
'Neath rampired ^ SoHdor pleasant riding on the 
Ranee ! " 645 

How hope succeeds despair on each Captain's counte- 
nance ! 
Out burst all with one accord, 

*' This is Paradise for Hell ! 

Let France, let France's King 

Thank the man that did the thing ! '* 650 

What a shout, and all one word, 

" Herve Kiel ! " 
As he stepped in front once more, 

Not a symptom of surprise 

In the frank blue Breton eyes, 655 

Just the same man as before. 



IX 

Then said Damfreville, '' My friend, 
I must speak out at the end. 

Though I find the speaking hard. 
Praise is deeper than the lips : 660 

You have saved the King his ships, 

You must name your own reward. 
'Faith, our sun was near eclipse ! 
Demand whate'er you will, 
France remains your debtor still. 665 

1 Ramparted. 



Selected Poems 293 

Ask to heart's content and have ! or my name's not 
Damfreville." 



Then a beam of fun outbroke 

On the bearded mouth that spoke, 

As the honest heart laughed through 

Those frank eyes of Breton blue : 670 

" Since I needs must say my say, 

Since on board the duty's done. 

And from Malo Roads to Croisic Point, what is it 
but a run ? — 
Since 'tis ask and have, I may — 

Since the others go ashore — 675 

Come ! A good whole holiday ! 

Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the Belle 
Aurore ! " 
That he asked and that he got, — nothing more. 

XI 

Name and deed alike are lost: 

Not a pillar nor a post 680 

In his Croisic keeps alive the feat as it befell ; 
Not a head in white and black 
On a single fishing-smack. 

In memory of the man but for whom had gone to 
wrack 
All that France saved from the fight whence England 
bore the bell. 685 



294 Robert Browning 

Go to Paris : rank on rank 

Search the heroes flung pell-mell 
On the Louvre, face and flank ! 

You shall look long enough ere you come to Herv6 
Kiel. 
So, for better and for worse, 690 

Herv^ Riel, accept my verse ! 
In my verse, Herve Riel, do thou once more 
Save the squadron, honour France, love thy wife the 
Belle Aurore ! 

XI 

Pheidippides 

Xaipere, piKto/xev. 

First I salute this soil of the blessed, river and rock ! 

Gods of my birthplace, daemons ^ and heroes, honour 
to all ! 695 

Then I name thee, claim thee for our patron, co-equal 
in praise . 

— Ay, with Zeus the Defender, with Her of the aegis 
and spear ! 

Also, ye of the bow and the buskin, praised be your 
peer, 

Now, henceforth and forever, — O latest to whom I 
upraise 

Hand and heart and voice ! For Athens, leave pas- 
ture and flock ! 700 

Present to help, potent to save. Pan — patron I call ! 

^ Lesser divinities; guardian spirits. 



Selected Poems 295 

Archons of Athens, topped by the tettix, see, I return ! 
See, 'tis myself here standing alive, no spectre that 

speaks ! 
Crowned with the myrtle, did you command me, 

Athens and you, 
" Run, Pheidippides, run and race, reach Sparta for aid ! 
Persia has come, we are here, where is She? " Your 

command I obeyed, 706 

Ran and raced : like stubble, some field which a fire 

runs through, 
Was the space between city and city : two days, two 

nights did I burn 
Over the hills, under the dales, down pits and up peaks. 

Into their midst I broke : breath served but for " Persia 
has come ! 710 

Persia bids Athens proffer slaves '-tribute, water and 
earth ; 

Razed to the ground is Eretria — but Athens, shall 
Athens sink. 

Drop into dust and die — the flower of Hellas utterly 
die, 

Die, with the wide world spitting at Sparta, the stupid, 
the stander-by? 

Answer me quick, what help, what hand do you stretch 
o'er destruction's brink? 715 

How, — when ? No care for my limbs ! — there's light- 
ning in all and some — 

Fresh and fit your message to bear, once lips give it 
birth ! " 



296 Robert Browning 

O my Athens — Sparta love thee ? Did Sparta respond ? 

Every face of her leered in a furrow of envy, mistrust, 

Malice, — each eye of her gave me its glitter of grati- 
fied hate ! 720 

Gravely they turned to take counsel, to cast for ex- 
cuses. I stood 

Quivering, — the limbs of me fretting as fire frets, an 
inch from dry wood : 

" Persia has come, Athens asks aid, and still they de- 
bate? 

Thunder, thou Zeus ! Athene, are Spartans a quarry 
beyond 

Swing of thy spear? Phoibos and Artemis, clang them 
' Ye must ' ! " 725 

No bolt launched from Olumpos ! Lo, their answer at 
last! 

"Has Persia come, — does Athens ask aid, — may 
Sparta befriend ? 

Nowise precipitate judgment — too weighty the issue 
at stake ! 

Count we no time lost time which lags through respect to 
the gods ! 

Ponder that precept of old, 'No warfare, whatever the odds 

In your favour, so long as the moon, half-orbed, is un- 
able to take 731 

Full-circle her state in the sky ! ' Already she rounds 
to it fast : 

Athens must wait, patient as we — who judgment sus- 
pend." 



Selected Poems 297 

Athens, — except for that sparkle, — thy name, I had 

mouldered to ash ! 
That sent a blaze through my blood ; off, off and away 

was I back, 735 

— Not one word to waste, one look to lose on the false 

and the vile ! 
Yet " O gods of my land ! " I cried, as each hillock 

and plain. 
Wood and stream, I knew, I named, rushing past them 

again, 
" Have ye kept faith, proved mindful of honours we 

paid you erewhile ? 
Vain was the filleted victim, the fulsome libation ! Too 

rash 740 

Love in its choice, paid you so largely service so slack ! 

" Oak and olive and bay, — I bid you cease to enwreathe 
Brows made bold by your leaf ! Fade at the Persian's 

foot. 
You that, our patrons were pledged, should never adorn 

a slave ! 
Rather I hail thee, Parnes. — trust to thy wild waste 

tract ! 745 

Treeless, herbless, lifeless mountain ! What matter if 

slacked 
My speed may hardly be, for homage to crag and to cave 
No deity deigns to drape with verdure ? — at least I can 

breathe. 
Fear in thee no fraud from the blind, no lie from the 

mute ! " 



Robert Browning 



Such my cry as, rapid, I ran over Parnes' ridge ; 750 
Gully and gap I clambered and cleared till, sudden, a 

bar 
Jutted, a stoppage of stone against me, blocking the 

way. 
Right ! for I minded the hollow to traverse, the fissure 

across : 
" Where I could enter, there I depart by ! Night in the 

fosse ? 
Athens to aid ? Though the dive were through Erebos, 

thus I obey — 755 

Out of the day dive, into the day as bravely arise ! No 

bridge 
Better!" — when — ha! what was it I came on, of 

wonders that are ? 

There, in the cool of a cleft, sat he — majestical 

Pan! 
Ivy drooped wanton, kissed his head, moss cushioned 

his hoof ; 
All the great god was good in the eyes grave-kindly — 

the curl 760 

Carved on the bearded cheek, amused at a mortal's awe 
As, under the human trunk, the goat-thighs grand I 

saw. 
"Halt, Pheidippides ! " — halt I did, my brain of a 

whirl : 
" Hither to me ! Why pale in my presence ? " he gracious 

began : 
"How is it, — Athens, only in Hellas, holds me aloof? 



Selected Poems 299 

*' Athens, she only, rears me no fane, makes me no 

feast ! 766 

Wherefore ? Than I what godship to Athens more 

helpful of old ? 
Ay, and still, and for ever her friend ! Test Pan, trust me ! 
Go, bid Athens take heart, laugh Persia to scorn, have 

faith 
In the temples and tombs ! Go, say to Athens, ' The 

Goat-God saith : 770 

When Persia — so much as strews not the soil — is cast 

in the sea. 
Then praise Pan who fought in the ranks with your most 

and least. 
Goat-thigh to greaved-thigh, made one cause with the 

free and the bold ! ' 

" Say Pan saith : ' Let this, foreshowing the place, be 
the pledge ! '" 

(Gay, the liberal hand held out this herbage I bear 775 

— Fennel — I grasped it a-tremble with dew — what- 
ever it bode) 

" While, as for thee " . . . But enough ! He was gone. 
If I ran hitherto — 

Be sure that, the rest of my journey, I ran no longer, but 
flew. 

Parnes to Athens — earth no more, the air was my road : 

Here am I back. Praise Pan, we stand no more on the 
razor's edge ! 780 

Pan for Athens, Pan for me ! I too have a guerdon rare ! 



300 Robert Browning 

Then spoke Miltiades. " And thee, best runner of Greece, 
Whose limbs did duty indeed, — what gift is promised 

thyself ? 
Tell it us straightway, — Athens the mother demands 

of her son ! " 
Rosily blushed the youth : he paused : but, lifting at 

length 785 

His eyes from the ground, it seemed as he gathered the 

rest of his strength 
Into the utterance — " Pan spoke thus : ' For what thou 

hast done 
Count on a worthy reward ! Henceforth be allowed 

thee release 
From the racer's toil, no vulgar reward in praise or in pelf !' 

" I am bold to believe. Pan means reward the most to 

my mind ! 790 

Fight I shall, with our foremost, wherever this fennel 

may grow, — 
Pound — Pan helping us — Persia to dust, and, under 

the deep, 
Whelm her away for ever; and then, — no Athens to 

save, — 
Marry a certain maid, I know keeps faith to the brave, — 
Hie to my house and home : and, when my children 

shall creep 795 

Close to my knees, — recount how the God was awful 

yet kind, 
Promised their sire reward to the full — rewarding him 

— so!" 



Selected Poems 301 

Unforeseeing one ! Yes, he fought on the Marathon 
day : 

So, when Persia was dust, all cried " To Akropolis ! 

Run, Pheidippides, one race more! the meed is thy due ! 

'Athens is saved, thank Pan,' go shout!" He flung 
down his shield, 801 

Ran like fire once more : and the space 'twixt the Fen- 
nel field 

And Athens was stubble again, a field which a fire runs 
through. 

Till in he broke : " Rejoice, we conquer 1 " Like wi"ne 
through clay, 

Joy in his blood bursting his heart, he died — the bliss! 

So, to this day, when friend meets friend, the word of 

salute 806 

Is still " Rejoice ! " — his word which brought rejoicing 

indeed. 
So is Pheidippides happy for ever, — the noble strong 

man 
Who could race like a god, bear the face of a god, whom 

a god loved so well ; 
He saw the land saved he had helped to save, and was 

suffered to tell 810 

Such tidings, yet never decline, but, gloriously as he 

began. 
So to end gloriously — once to shout, thereafter be 

mute : 
'' Athens is saved ! " — Pheidippides dies in the shout 

for his meed. 



J02 Robert Browning 

XII 

My Last Duchess 

That's my last Duchess painted on the wall, 

Looking as if she were alive. I call 815 

That piece a wonder, now : Fra Pandolf 's hands 

Worked busily a day, and there she stands. 

Will't please you sit and look at her ? I said 

" Fra Pandolf " by design, for never read 

Strangers like you that pictured countenance, 820 

The depth and passion of its earnest glance, 

But to myself they turned (since none puts by 

The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) 

And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst. 

How such a glance came there ; so, not the first 825 

Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, 'twas not 

Her husband's presence only, called that spot 

Of joy into the Duchess' cheek : perhaps 

Fra Pandolf chanced to say, " Her mantle laps 

Over my lady's wrist too much," or *' Paint 830 

Must never hope to reproduce the faint 

Half-flush that dies along her throat : " such stuff 

Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough 

For calling up that spot of joy. She had 

A heart — how shall I say ? — too soon made glad, 835 

Too easily impressed : she liked whate'er 

She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. 

Sir, 'twas all one ! My favour at her breast, 

The dropping of the daylight in the West, 

The bough of cherries some officious fool 840 



Selected Poems 303 

Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule 
She rode with round the terrace — all and each 
Would draw from her alike the approving speech, 
Or blush, at least. She thanked men, — good! but 

thanked 
Somehow — I know not how — as if she ranked 845 
My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name 
With anybody's gift. Who'd stoop to blame 
This sort of trifling ? Even had you skill 
In speech — (which I have not) — to make your will 
Quite clear to such an one, and say, " Just this 850 

Or that in you disgusts me ; here you miss. 
Or there exceed the mark " — and if she let 
Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set 
Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse, 
— E'en then would be some stooping ; and I choose 855 
Never to stoop. Oh, sir, she smiled, no doubt. 
Whene'er I passed her ; but who passed without 
Much the same smile ? This grew ; I gave commands ; 
Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands 
As if alive. Will't please you rise ? We'll meet 860 
The company below, then. I repeat, 
The Count your master's known munificence 
Is ample warrant that no just pretence 
Of mine for dowry will be disallowed ; 
Though his fair daughter's self, as I avowed 865 

At starting, is my object. Nay, we'll go 
Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, 
Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, 
W' hich Glaus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me ! 



304 Robert Browning 

XIII 

Up at a Villa — Down in the City 

(As distinguished by an Italian Person of Quality) 

Had I but plenty of money, money enough and to 
spare, 870 

The house for me, no doubt, were a house in the city- 
square ; 

Ah, such a life, such a life, as one leads at the window 
there ! 

Something to see, by Bacchus, something to hear, at 

least ! 
There, the whole day long, one's life is a perfect 

feast ; 
While up at a villa one lives, I maintain it, no more 

than a beast. 875 

Well now, look at our villa ! stuck like the horn of a 

bull 
Just on a mountain-edge as bare as the creature's skull, 
Save a mere shag of a bush with hardly a leaf to pull ! 
— I scratch my own, sometimes, to see if the hair's 

turned wool. 

But the city, oh the city — the square with the houses ! 

Why ? 880 

They are stone-faced, white as a curd, there's something 

to take the eye ! 
Houses in four straight lines, not a single front awry ; 



Selected Poems 305 

You watch who crosses and gossips, who saunters, who 

hurries by ; 
Green blinds, as a matter of course, to draw when the 

sun gets high ; 
And the shops with fanciful signs which are painted 

properly. 885 

What of a villa ? Though winter be over in March by 

rights, 
'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well 

off the heights : 
You've the brown ploughed land before, where the oxen 

steam and wheeze, 
And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint grey 

olive trees. 

Is it better in May, I ask you? You've summer all at 

once ; 890 

In a day he leaps complete with a few strong April 

suns. 
'Mid the sharp short emerald wheat, scarce risen three 

fingers well, 
The wild tulip, at end. of its tube, blows out its great 

red bell 
Like a thin clear bubble of blood, for the children to 

pick and sell. 

Is it ever hot in the square? There's a fountain to 
spout and splash ! 895 

In the shade it sings and springs ; in the shine such 
foambows flash 

SELECTIONS — 20 



3o6 Robert Browning 

On the horses with curling fish-tails, that prance and 

paddle and pash 
Round the lady atop in her conch — fifty gazers do not 

abash, 
Though all that she wears is some weeds round her 

waist in a sort of sash. 

All the year long at the villa, nothing to see though 

X you linger, 900 

Except yon cypress that points like death's lean lifted 

forefinger. 
Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix i'the corn 

and mingle. 
Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem 

a-tingle. 
Late August or early September, the stunning cicala is 

shrill, 
And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the 

resinous firs on the hill. 905 

Enough of the seasons, — I spare you the months of 

the fever and chill. 

Ere you open your eyes in the city, the blessed church- 
bells begin : 

No sooner the bells leave off than the diligence rattles in : 

You get the pick of the news, and it costs you never a pin. 

By and by there's the travelling doctor gives pills, lets 
blood, draws teeth ; 910 

Or the Pulcinello-trumpet breaks up the market be- 
neath. 



Selected Poems 307 

At the post-office such a scene-picture — the new play, 

piping hot ! 
And a notice how, only this morning, three liberal 

thieves were shot. 
Above it, behold the Archbishop's most fatherly of 

rebukes. 
And beneath, with his crown and his lion, some little 

new law of the Duke's ! 915 

Or a sonnet with flowery marge, to the Reverend Don 

So-and-so, 
Who is Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Saint Jerome, and 

Cicero, 
" And moreover," (the Sonnet goes rhyming,) " the skirts 

of Saint Paul has reached. 
Having preached us those six Lent-lectures more 

unctuous than ever he preached." 
Noon strikes, — here sweeps the procession! our Lady 

borne smiling and smart 920 

With a pink gauze gown all spangles, and seven swords 

stuck in her heart ! 
Bafig-whafig-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the 

fife; 
No keeping one's haunches still: it's the greatest pleas- 
ure in life. 



But bless you, it's dear — it's dear ! fowls, wine, at 

double the rate. 
They have clapped a new tax upon salt, and what oil 

pays passing the gate 925 



3o8 Robert Browning 

It's a horror to think of. And so, the villa for me, not 

the city ! 
Beggars can scarcely be choosers : but still — ah, the 

pity, the pity ! 
Look, two and two go the priests, then the monks with 

cowls and sandals, 
And the penitents dressed in white shirts, a-holding the 

yellow candles ; 
One, he carries a flag up straight, and another a cross 

with handles, 930 

And the Duke's guard brings up the rear, for the 

better prevention of scandals : 
Bafig-w hang-whang goes the drum, tootle-te-tootle the 

fife. 
Oh, a day in the city-square, there is no such pleasure 

in life I 



NOTES 



LORD BYRON 

41. On one of these columns Byron's name is carved. [See 
Naef's Gtiide quoted by Mr. E. H. Coleridge.] 

42. The large, white-walled Chateau de Chillon stands on the 
shores of the Lake of Geneva, between the Alps and the entrances 
of the Rhone. [See Naef.] 

415. Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, 1812. 

512. Pricking on. Cf. Spenser's Faerie Queene, Canto I, 1. i. 
This may be one of the many reminiscences of older poetry with 
which Byron's remarkable memory was stored. 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 

209. "There are [those] who ask not." 

257. Two Voices. The voice of the sea is that of England, the 
voice of the mountain is of Switzerland, which was usurped, in 
1800, by the French, under Napoleon. 

XL Venice was taken by the French in 1797. 

351. Cf. Milton's Lycidas, 1. 37. 

628. The family name of the Marquis of Queensberry is Douglas. 

757. Cf. previous lines 99, 100. 

XXIX. This poem contains many quotations from a beautiful 
ballad by Hamilton of Bangour (i 704-1 754) called The Braes of 
Yarrow. Certain of the passages reproduced will be found in the 
stanzas below. 

309 



jio Notes 

" Sweet smells the birk, green grows, green grows the grass, 
Yellow on Yarrow's bank the gowan, 
Fair hangs the apple frae the rock, 
Sweet the wave of Yarrow flowin". 

" Flows Yarrow sweet ? as sweet, as sweet flows Tweed, 
As green its grass, its gowan as yellow. 
As sweet smells on its braes the birk, 
The apple frae the rock as mellow. 

" Fair was thy love, fair, fair indeed thy love; 
In flowery bands thou him didst fetter; 
Though he was fair and weil beloved again, 
Than me he never lo'ed thee better. 

" Busk ye, then busk, my bonny, bonny bride; 
Busk ye, busk ye, my winsome marrow ; 
Busk ye, and lo'e me on the banks of Tweed, 
And think nae mair on the Braes of Yarrow." 

XXXVI. " Written soon after the death, by shipwreck, of 
Wordsworth's brother John." [Palgrave.] 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 

310. Interlunar swoon is explained by Palgrave as the " interval 
of the moon's invisibility." 

531. " Arcturus never sets; hence the ever blooming daisies are 
called Arcturi." [Alexander.] 

772. The Maenads w^ere the frenzied followers of Dionysus. 

822. Mr. Palgrave has given an appropriate title to lines taken 
from Shelley's drama, Prometheus Un/wuiid. 

840. Stain. In the opinion of several editors, Shelley here 
meant "strain." 

859. " Thoughts " depends upon " on " in the following line. 



Notes 



JOHN KEATS 



3IT 



51. Keats has confused Cortez and Balboa. 

III. Palgrave has supphed a title "that the aim of the piece 
following may be grasped more clearly." 

V. "This beautiful sonnet was the last word of a youth in whom, 
if the fulfilment may ever safely be prcjphesied fr(;m the promise, 
England lost one of the most rarely gifted in the long roll of her 
poets." [I'algrave.] 

1 58. Shakespeare, ]U:n Jonson, and other " poets dead and gone " 
had frecjuented the Mermaid. 



ROBERT BROWNING 

I. These songs have to do with the uprising for King Charles I 
against Parliament, in 1640. 

IV. This poem has no historical basis. 

IX. One Word More was originally the final poem in the collec- 
tion called Men and Women. 

602. Grdve. Sands left by the outgoing tide, near St. Malo. 

686-689. This refers to statues and (jther memorials in the 
Louvre. 

702. Archons. Magistrates. — Tettix. A golden cicada worn 
as an emblem. 

704. The myrtle wreath was the badge of the messenger. 

776. Fennel. '■'■ Fennel field, in Greek Marathon; and Pan 
meant when he gave Pheidippides the bunch of fennel to signify 
the place where the victory would be won." [MLss Porter and 
Miss Clarke.] 



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